tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-131895292018-01-09T09:42:33.527-06:00Islam and EconomicsRandom thoughts about Islam, Muslims and
issues related to economics and finance.<p>
<A href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~elgamal">
Mahmoud El-Gamal is a Professor at Rice University<p>
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~elgamal</A><p>
<b>(Blog feed at <a href="http://elgamal.blogspot.com/atom.xml">
http://elgamal.blogspot.com/atom.xml</a>)</b>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-5292708433364981982018-01-05T12:36:00.002-06:002018-01-06T02:13:08.341-06:00Al-Fiyyashiyah (What's Wrong?)I woke up this morning singing this song, attributed to the Algerian/Moroccan Sufi figure Uthman ibn Yahia Al-Sharqi (aka Sidi Bahlul). The most complete text of the poem that I could find online <a href="http://www.wata.cc/forums/showthread.php?65134-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%8C-%D9%82%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%B2%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%8A" target="_blank">is available here</a>. After listening to a dozen or so renditions, I felt driven either to write some Arabic verses in the same meter and rhyming theme (not that I don't like the original, but some of its verses are repetitive and touch me much less than others), or to write a translation of the main verses.<br /><br />There are dozens of Youtube videos and songs of the poem, including a relatively traditional modernized rendition at the <a href="http://www.wata.cc/forums/showthread.php?65134-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%8C-%D9%82%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%B2%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%8A" target="_blank">2017 Mawazine Festival in Rabat, Morocco, where Sami Yusuf offered a few translated verses together with the traditional rendition</a>. Sami Yusuf also has&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/GMk4QI_SAaU" target="_blank">a fully English version professionally recorded</a>&nbsp;(followed by some Arabic), which attempted to keep the meter and rhyming theme so that it can be sung to the same tune. However, I wasn't happy with the translation -- which at times seemed too literal, not sufficiently literal, or contrived... Mine below is equally bad on all dimensions, also to keep the meter, although I have decided not to rhyme...<br /><br />I wanted to mention how this song came to haunt me this morning. A decade ago, my late father became very sick (and died six months later). He was suffering from liver cirrhosis -- a very common disease in my native Egypt, mainly because of the Hepatitis C epidemic that was not guarded against when they merely boiled needles (<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hcv/pdfs/hepcincarcerationfactsheet.pdf" target="_blank">the CDC tells us that this is not sufficient</a>&nbsp;to kill the virus).<br /><br />One of the worst things about liver disease is that it causes disturbances in blood chemistry which make the brain malfunction. In between episodes of anguish over his mental state during my visit ten years ago, my late father seemed to have moments of extreme lucidity, during which I tried quickly to have a few final good, but necessarily short, conversations with him. On one such occasion, when I noticed that he was lucid, I blurted out my biggest fear: "I am worried for my children." He simply smiled with a raised eyebrow that I read as "how silly!" and he just said: "ربنا موجود," which literally means "God exists," but is used as an everyday Egyptian colloquialism meaning "don't worry, leave it to a higher power, all will be well."<br /><br />This is the central message of the poem, which is often sung interspersed with adoration of the Prophet at the same:<br /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13;"><i>اللهم صَلِّ على المصطفى ... حبيبنا محمد عليه السلام</i></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #274e13;"><i>May God shower mercy upon the Chosen-one ... our beloved Muhammad, upon him be peace</i></span><br /><br />Each segments starts with the main refrain, which is a quick-double-rhythm couplet, and then proceeds in six-verse segments that begin with a slower-single-rhythm couplet that explains the point to be made followed by a quatrain that makes the same point more poetically at the quicker double rhythm... I'll translate only a few segments here, because the meanings merely repeat with different examples... It is a meant to bring about a mystic trance (and mental peace) after many repetitions of the rhythm slowing down then speeding up again, leading to another chanting of the main refrain...<br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>أنا ما لي فياش ... &nbsp;اش عليا مني&nbsp;</i></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>What's wrong with me? What's wrong? ... What have I caused myself?<br />نقلق من رزقي لاش ... و الخالق يرزقني&nbsp;</i></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>I fear poverty! Why, ... while my Maker sustains?</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>أنا عبد ربي له قدرة ... يهون بها كل أمر عسير&nbsp;</i></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>I belong to my Lord who has such great power ... before which every difficulty must be eased <br />فان كنت عبدا ضعيف القوى ... فربي على كل شيء قدير&nbsp;</i></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">So although I'm a servant&nbsp;</i><i>who is very weak ... my Lord has full power over every affair</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i><br /></i><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">مني اش عليا ... أنا عبد مملوك&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><i style="color: #274e13; text-align: center;">What do I have that's mine</i><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i>? ... I am a slave who's owned</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">و الأشيا مقضيا ... ما في التحقيق شكوك&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i>All my needs will be met ... there's no doubt with Vision</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">ربي ناظر فيا ... و نا نظري متروك&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i>My Lord chooses for me ... and my own choice is void</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">في الأرحام و في الأحشا ... من نطفة صورني</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">He made me in a womb ... (without my choice or help)</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;"><br /></i></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">... [skipping a lot of verses]</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;"><br /></i></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>أنا ما لي فياش ... &nbsp;اش عليا مني&nbsp;</i></span></span></span></span><br /><i style="color: #274e13; text-align: center;">What's wrong with me? What's wrong? ... What have I caused myself?&nbsp;</i><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i><br />نقلق من رزقي لاش ... و الخالق يرزقني&nbsp;</i></span></span></span></span><br /><i style="color: #274e13; text-align: center;">I fear poverty! Why, ... while my maker sustains?</i><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>تجولت بالفكر في هل اتى ... و قلت لقلبي كفاك الجليل&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>My mind did wonder over all that may become ... but I told my heart: Hush, the Transcendent sustains<br />مدبر أمري و لا علم لي ... هو الله حسبي و نعم الوكيل&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>He plans all my affairs, and I have no knowledge ... He is my God, sustainer, upon whom I rely</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i><br />ثق يا قلبي بالله ... فهو المعطي المانع&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>My heart: Have faith in God ... He gives and takes away<br />و ارض باحكام الله ... لنك اليه راجع&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>And accept God's decrees ... because you must return<br />ماذا في علم الله ... الخير في الواقع&nbsp;</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>Whatever God will bring ... it must be for the best<br />تدبيرك ما يسواش ... من تدبيرك دعني</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i>Your plans have no value ... so, please, don't plan for me</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>===</i></span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The last translated verse is reminiscent of the great fourth aphorism of Ibn `Ataillah in his Book of Wisdom:&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"أرح نفسك من التدبير... فما قام به غيرك عنك لا تقم به لنفسك" --&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Don't exert&nbsp;</span>yourself<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;in planning... because whatever Another has already done on your behalf, you should not do for yourself."</span></span><br /><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-72569065272206362592017-11-24T10:27:00.001-06:002017-11-24T10:55:10.738-06:00"Religious Sciences" Are The Problem<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a draft of my sermon later today at ISGH Main Center. I had prepared one yesterday, and then woke up to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/world/middleeast/mosque-attack-egypt.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=first-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;_r=0" target="_blank">the catastrophic massacre at a North Sinai mosque in my native Egypt</a>&nbsp;(at the time of writing this draft, 235 were confirmed killed). Sadly, the same analysis that I was planning to discuss at the micro level of Muslim communities applies to the challenge of our times as modern Muslims, and the conclusion is the same: So-called religious scholarship is to blame.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On Tunisia's National Women's Day, August 13, Tunisian President Al-Baji Qa'id Al-Sibsi called for greater gender equality in his country, citing specifically inheritance rules and intermarriage with non-Muslims (<a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/08/equality-in-inheritance-raises-controversy-in-tunisia.html" target="_blank">English coverage of the speech is available here</a>). He said that he is confident that competent Tunisian legislators will find a way to reconcile modernity with religious edicts.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A week later, on August 20, <a href="http://www.azhar.eg/act/detail/%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B2%D9%87%D8%B1-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A9" target="_blank">Al-Azhar issued an official statement "to the umma"</a> without explicitly mentioning President Al-Sibsi, but left no doubt what issue they were addressing. Their main message was that they recognize the need for ijtihad (legal reasoning) in cases wherein there are no explicit and unequivocal texts, and affirmed that family affairs (inheritance and marriage) discussed by President Sibsi fell into that category.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>(1). </b>They went further, though, affirming that <span style="color: #990000;">"knowledge of which texts are subject to interpretation and which are not is only available to scholars </span>[meaning their brand of religious scholars, no doubt]<span style="color: #990000;">, and is not acceptable from commoners and non-specialists, regardless of their levels of education."</span></span><br /><b style="font-family: inherit;">(2). </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">They then said that even as they do not mean to interfere in any political affair, they also </span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">"refused categorically any political moves that can touch Muslims' creed and Shari`a rules, or to meddle therein." </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">[In other words, they claimed a&nbsp;</span>power sharing<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;</span>arrangement for which they were not elected.]<br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>(3). </b>They closed with an even more shocking claim of monopoly over religious affairs: <span style="color: #990000;">"Let everyone know that the mission of the Noble Al-Azhar, especially when it comes to protecting the religion of Allah, is a universal mission, which is not bound by any geographical boundaries or political leanings."</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I feel compelled to address those three extravagant claims:&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>(1.A).</b> The first, that the only knowledgeable people are their types of scholars is belied by the following Hadith:</span></span><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-align: justify;">حَدَّثَنَا&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=6271" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة"><span style="color: navy;">أَبُو الدَّرْدَاءِ&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a>،&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=3929" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة"><span style="color: navy;">وَأَبُو أُمَامَةَ&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a>،&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=8115" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة"><span style="color: navy;">وَوَاثِلَةُ بْنُ الْأَسْقَعِ&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a>،&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=720" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة"><span style="color: navy;">وَأَنَسُ بْنُ مَالِكٍ&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a>، قَالُوا : سُئِلَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِهِ وَسَلَّمَ&nbsp;<span style="color: green;">" مَنِ الرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ ؟ قَالَ : هُوَ مَنْ بَرَّتْ يَمِينُهُ ، وَصَدَقَ لِسَانُهُ ، وَعَفَّ فَرْجُهُ وَبَطْنُهُ ، فَذَلِكَ الرَّاسِخُ "&nbsp;</span>.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[Several highly trusted companions narrated that the Prophet (p) was asked: "Who are those `well established in knowledge'," and he answered: "one who is honest in his dealings, honest in his words, and chaste in his body, that is someone who is well established in knowledge."]</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It merits noting that this is in reference to one reading of the verse [3:7]:</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">(&nbsp;</span><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?flag=1&amp;bk_no=49&amp;ID=237#docu" style="border: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">هو الذي أنزل عليك الكتاب منه آيات محكمات هن أم الكتاب وأخر متشابهات فأما الذين في قلوبهم زيغ فيتبعون ما تشابه منه ابتغاء الفتنة وابتغاء تأويله وما يعلم تأويله إلا الله والراسخون في العلم يقولون آمنا به كل من عند ربنا وما يذكر إلا أولو الألباب</span></a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">which allows for those "well established in knowledge" to reinterpret verses when needed. It is also narrated on the authority of Ibn Umar (r) that the Prophet (p) supplicated for Ibn Abbas (r):</span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">وقال&nbsp;</span><span style="color: maroon; text-align: justify;">الحافظ العراقي</span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;في تخرج أحاديث إحياء علوم الدين:&nbsp;</span><span class="DetailFont" style="color: #6600cc; text-align: justify;">حديث: اللهم فقهه في الدين وعلمه التأويل&nbsp;ـ قاله لابن عباس، رواه البخاري من حديث ابن عباس دون قوله: وعلمه التأويل ـ&nbsp;وهو بهذه الزيادة عن أحمد وابن حبان والحاكم وقال صحيح الإسناد. اهـ.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">which includes in several narrations that he (p) supplicated that Allah would provide Ibn Abbas understanding of religion and the ability to reinterpret texts... This begs the question: Why wouldn't God offer the same gift of reinterpretations to others outside their institutions.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>(2.A).</b> The second claim that they don't meddle in politics and don't want politicians to meddle in religion is a claim to power that religious scholars have simply never had historically. Religious scholars can serve an&nbsp;important social and political function in providing advice, but when they have claimed such power over societies, the results have always been catastrophic.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>(3.A).</b> Which brings me to the third power grab by Al-Azhar and similar scholarly bodies. They claimed that their mission and power is universal, which means not only that they can opine on how legislation that claims to be consistent with Shari`a should be framed, but also that they have power over our&nbsp;daily lives right here in Houston, TX. Unfortunately, they do indeed have this power over many of us, but only because we choose to give it to them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: start;">Now, I return to the horrific terrorist attack on the Egyptian mosque earlier today. For nearly two decades, "religious scholars" of Al-Azhar and other reputable institutions have assured us that terrorism cannot be more distant from the teachings of Islam. What is needed, they keep claiming, is more empowerment of their brand of religious scholarship in order to defeat the warped logic of terrorist groups. And it is, indeed, they who have been called upon, repeatedly, by political authorities worldwide to reform religious discourse, etc.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: start;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The catastrophic terrorist attacks in Al-Azhar's backyard today can only mean one of two things:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(i). They do not have that universal power to guard Islam as they have claimed, because the terrorists are obviously not mindful of their edicts to refrain from terrorist activities, and/or</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(ii). They do have that power and they have failed us miserably in using it.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Either way, they need to change their discourse that the solution to our global problem of Muslim terrorists is further empowerment of their institutions and their type of "scholarship".</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to be clear on one thing, the Shaykh-ul-Azhar, Dr. Ahmad El-Tayeb, who read this statement in August, is one of the most scholarly and decent people who have ever lived. The problem is that he belongs to an institutional and intellectual framework statically anchored in early medieval times, and thus fundamentally incapable of helping us to deal with the problems of modernity.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let me illustrate this point further, during the remaining time, and at my lowly social pay grade. On the issue of inheritance, which was the first addressed by President Al-Sibsi and rebutted harshly by Dr. El-Tayeb on behalf of Al-Azhar, <a href="http://www.naml.info/2017-Annual-Conference" target="_blank">I wish to refer to a legal conference that I attended last month in Chicago</a>&nbsp;(National Association of Muslim Lawyers, or NAML, annual conference).&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At a session on family law, I observed as lawyers offered multiple familiar solutions to parents who were asking how to deal with the explicit rules of inheritance in the Qur'an, which mandate that a daughter would inherit half of what her brother would. The lawyers went through the usual ancient and modern methods: give her more during your lifetime, establish a family trust or corporation with equal benefits, etc. This is the "knowledge" that we have received from "religious scholarship."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One lady in the audience interjected words to the following effect: "But you don't understand my problem! I am fully convinced, in this day and age, that it is fundamentally immoral to give my daughter less than I give her brother. But I also feel that it is fundamentally immoral to say that the verse is valid in my situation and then use the legal tricks you are suggesting to circumvent it. Either way, I feel that I will be doing something deeply immoral, and cannot escape the guilt."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Chair of the conference, Dr. Asifa Quraishi, who teaches Islamic and Constitutional Law at the University of Wisconsin (I received her permission to quote her) asked the lawyer-panelists why they have not contemplated simply saying that the rules of inheritance in the Qur'an were part of a larger system, wherein a judge would enforce financial support for women if they needed it from male relatives, etc. In the absence of that full system of laws, and the concomitant cultural norms not to circumvent it, it does not make sense to apply the rule.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is an opinio<span style="font-family: inherit;">n that several scholars had suggested over at least over the past century, including most famously Mohammed Arkoun and Khaled Abou El Fadl, among many others. The lady who had asked the question seemed much more comfortable with that approach, because it didn't result in any guilt. The lawyers implied that they would not feel comfortable expressing such an opinion.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I should mention also that the second issue raised by President Sibsi, and rebutted harshly by Dr. El-Tayeb, regarding Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men, had been similarly contested by scholars who would be considered "non specialists" by Al-Azhar. They had argued that the Qur'an explicitly introduced symmetry in the prohibition of Muslims marrying polytheists [2:221]:</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=119&amp;idto=119&amp;bk_no=51&amp;ID=114#docu" style="border: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">ولا تنكحوا المشركات حتى يؤمن ولأمة مؤمنة خير من مشركة ولو أعجبتكم ولا تنكحوا المشركين حتى يؤمنوا ولعبد مؤمن خير من مشرك ولو أعجبكم أولئك يدعون إلى النار والله يدعو إلى الجنة والمغفرة&nbsp;</span></a></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=119&amp;idto=119&amp;bk_no=51&amp;ID=114#docu" style="border: 0px; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">بإذنه ويبين آياته للناس لعلهم يتذكرون</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and although an explicit exception is made for Muslim males to marry a woman "of the Book" (which was expanded in certain instances to include Zoroastrians and Hindus), but didn't offer a similar exception for women, the logic used by scholars to justify denying women the same right is paternalistically flawed: They argue that a Muslim man is required to allow his Christian or Jewish wife to practice her religion, but they fear that a Christian or Jewish husband will not allow his Muslim wife to practice hers.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is grounded in a social and legal framework that is alien to most of us today, so the scholars' claim to monopoly on such religious-legal edicts is deeply problematic. By failing to provide convincing arguments in both cases (inheritance and intermarriage), "religious scholars" feed Muslims' religious insecurities, guilt, and cognitive dissonance, which are surely responsible for convincing some demented people that the only way to live their Islam fully is to return to the norms of the seventh century.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thus, we have seen that "religious scholarship" lies at the core of our difficulties as modern Muslims, whether at the macro level, dealing with the global scourge of Muslim terrorism, or at the micro level of our family affairs. Readers of this blog will be familiar with my similar arguments about <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/wisint25&amp;div=35&amp;id=&amp;page=" target="_blank">the incoherence of classical Islamic jurisprudence in the age of financial engineering</a>.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is time for "religious scholars" to admit their failure and engage society with greater humility about their levels of "knowledge," in order to start a&nbsp;</span>fruitful<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;conversation on how to deal with the problems (both large and small) of Islam and modernity.</span></span></div>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-67442574096862602292017-09-16T12:42:00.001-05:002017-09-16T12:42:13.413-05:00Harvey, Rohingya, Yemen, and Syria: A Sermon on Duty Ethics in Charity<span style="font-family: inherit;">I received a surprising email late Thursday afternoon informing me that I was scheduled to give a sermon at ISGH Main Center yesterday. I thought that my formal preaching days were over (and I pity my colleagues and students who have to bear with my informal moralization), but duty ethics dictate that whenever invited to speak, one should.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><h2><span style="font-family: inherit;">Introduction</span></h2><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the opening verse, I chose&nbsp;</span><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=2811&amp;idto=2811&amp;bk_no=48&amp;ID=2257#docu" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;">ياأيها الذين آمنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم ومن يطع الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما</span>&nbsp;</span></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[O people of faith, be conscious and wary of God, and make your words truthful and carefully aimed; so that He may make your actions felicitous and expiate your sins; and whoever obeys God and his messenger has won a great reward.]</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next, I narrated a related prophetic tradition</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">عن</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;تميم بن أوس&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">رضي الله عنه ، أن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم قال :&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">( الدين النصيحة ، قلنا : لمن يا رسول الله ؟ قال : لله ، ولكتابه ، ولرسوله ، ولأئمة المسلمين وعامتهم )&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">رواه&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">البخاري&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">و</span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">مسلم</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[Bukhari and Muslim narrated on the aurhority of Tamim Al-Dari (r) that the Prophet (p) said: "Religion is sincerity in intention and deed." We (the companions) asked: "For whom, O messenger of God?," and he said: "For God, his book, his messenger, and for Muslims&nbsp;</span>leaders<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;and commoners."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I digressed on the word nasiha (نصيحة), which is used most commonly in Arabic to mean advice, but noted that the root of the word means purity; and its application in the context of advice simply refers to good advice being unadulterated by ulterior motives.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><h2><span style="font-family: inherit;">Main Point</span></h2><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To be religious is to be sincere in what we wish for others and how we act to achieve various ends. &nbsp;Therefore, even as we respond to the latest events, be they hurricanes or escalations in various humanitarian crises.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Reacting<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;positively to such events, by helping our neighbors or those far away, is merely part of basic human decency.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Religiousness is about being principled and steadfast in purity of intentions and conduct. This allows us to remain mindful and focused -- neither overreacting to the latest developments, nor mixing our intentions with political impurities.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this regard, Ali ibn Abi Taleb (r) famously said that this verse of the Qur'an summarizes the perfect level of detachment (called zuhd in Arabic; neither total detachment to the point of selfishness, nor insufficient detachment that makes us overreact emotionally to new events):</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=4752&amp;idto=4752&amp;bk_no=50&amp;ID=4810#docu" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;">ما أصاب من مصيبة في الأرض ولا في أنفسكم إلا في كتاب من قبل أن نبرأها إن ذلك على الله يسير</span></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=4753&amp;idto=4753&amp;bk_no=50&amp;ID=4811#docu" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">لكي لا تأسوا على ما فاتكم ولا تفرحوا بما آتاكم والله لا يحب كل مختال فخور</a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[No calamity befalls the earth or yourselves except it has been preordained and recorded before we bring it into existence; this is easy for God. (We tell yo this) so that you will not be sad for what you missed or happy for what you may get; God does not love those who are haughty and proud.]</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That is also why the Prophet (p) said:</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="" style="cursor: auto; font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><span class="HarfBody"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">أحب الأعمال إلى الله أدومها وإن قل</span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">[Partial recounting of narration by Bukhari on the authority of Aisha (r): "The actions most beloved to God are the steadiest, however limited in scope."]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This means that when we budget our time for charitable work, be it volunteering our time or donating our money, we should make it steady, and avoid being manipulated psychologically in ways that may constitute dereliction of duty to earlier commitments.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To explain this concept, I covered four examples with increasing degrees of complexity, but which illustrate the same common principle: Almost all calamities on earth have political dimensions that may bring impurities into our intentions or conduct, and the task of religion is to keep our intention and conduct pure, at least with regards to helping those most impacted by those calamities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h2>Harvey</h2><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first example I gave was hurricane Harvey, which hit us in Houston, and many admirably swung to action, helping our affected neighbors however we could. We all did this, regardless of our political views, even though there was a clear political dimension to this hurricane.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/pope-blasts-climate-skeptics-cites-moral-duty-to-act/2017/09/11/d0d7ce64-96f4-11e7-af6a-6555caaeb8dc_story.html?utm_term=.7cf9644463be" target="_blank">Pope Francis illustrated this political dimension during his visit to the Caribbean when he criticized those who continue to deny climate change in face of intensification and increased frequency of destructive hurricanes, even quoting scripture to say that people are unintelligent when they choose not to see what they don't want to see.&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;He argued that those who still doubt man's role in intensifying these events should ask scientists rather than relying on anecdotal evidence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, bringing up this point at this time is precisely anecdotal. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/14/trump-says-weve-had-bigger-storms-when-asked-about-harvey-irma-and-climate-change/?utm_term=.37c3b20c3ee7" target="_blank">President Trump illustrated that anecdotal evidence cuts both ways when he cited even bigger storms in the early part of the twentieth century.</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thus, this is a political issue, which can introduce impurities into our thinking. Are some environmentalists at least partially wishing for stronger storms so that they will be proven right? Religious and ethical ones surely would not, and they would agree with the Pope that we hope that nobody will get hurt, but should act, nonetheless, assuming the worst, because the harm if scientists arguing the climate-change case are right is quite substantial.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/07/politics/scott-pruitt-hurricanes-climate-change-interview/index.html" target="_blank">We can disagree is with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's argument that this was not the time to discuss climate change.</a>&nbsp;We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can disagree on political agendas based on our beliefs and interests, arguing our respective political cases, and still spring to action to help those who lose property or are at the risk of losing what's much more important.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thus, it is clear that we can disagree over political assignment of guilt and recipes for solving problems, but still do our duty to our fellow human beings. Thus, our principle should be quite obvious in this case. If we dissect the remaining three problems, which appear progressively thornier, we will find that they are exactly the same, at their core, and our duty is also the same: If you have a talent for politics and ideas on how to solve problems, then you should provide that advice. In the meantime, we should all do our duty by helping our fellow human beings who need that help.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h2>Rohingya</h2><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The next example is only slightly more complicated, at least from the likely political standpoint of this community, so it should be relatively easy to see how the same principle applies.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar has been a longstanding problem for decades. One thing that we should make clear is that this is not a religious issue -- as groups like AQ or countries like Iran may suggest to manipulate us psychologically into accepting their political agendas, at least partially. Even the Dalai Lama has said explicitly that if the Buddha were alive today, he would be the first to advocate for helping the poor Muslims who are fleeing persecution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The plight of the Rohingya is a political problem about land, ethnicity, and nationhood, similar to the plights of Armernians, Palestinians, Kurds, and other groups who were left out when nation states came into existence. Again, if you have political skill and ideas on how to solve this problem, then you should provide advice to leaders on how to do that. In the meantime, we can all agree that as long as countries like Bangladesh, which has been receiving many of those refugees, don't have the resources to accommodate them, and with international humanitarian aid being constrained because nation states are not donating sufficient funds to those efforts, it is part of our duty to help the humanitarian efforts in any way that we can -- regardless of where our political leanings may lie.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h2>Yemen</h2><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This brings me to the third crisis which is conspicuously absent from our community and media discourse, despite being the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/23/world/middleeast/yemen-cholera-humanitarian-crisis.html?mcubz=0&amp;_r=0" target="_blank">world's worst humanitarian crisis, by orders of magnitude</a>. The&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.unocha.org/yemen" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA) offers these numbers</a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">: 2.9 million people ar&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">internally</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">&nbsp;displaced, 17 million (well over half the population) are food insecure, and more than half a million have been infected with cholera. The humanitarian response funding gap stands at $1.3 billion, which comes to 56.5% of the total needed to date.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">The Yemen crisis, together with crises in Nigeria, South&nbsp;Sudan, and Somalia, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/no-one-is-paying-attention-to-the-worst-humanitarian-crisis-since-world-war-ii/2017/06/25/70d055f8-5767-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.57a0d3c94ff7" target="_blank">were called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II</a>, as <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39238808" target="_blank">the UN put it&nbsp;only a few months ago</a>. <a href="https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7903" target="_blank">Ambassador Nikki Haley said that this collective crisis (including the three African countries) "</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><a href="https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7903" target="_blank">should be leading every newscast and on the front page of every newspaper."</a></span><span style="background-color: white;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And yet, we hardly see any attention being paid to this crisis of epic proportions. This is partly a consequence of the recency effect in news cycles that are becoming shorter each year, but it may also be partly caused by politic sensitivities in this situation... It&nbsp;</span>shouldn't<span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">Exactly as we should have recognized in the first two examples that our political views (in this case, whether one sides with the Houthi rebels who started strife in Yemen or with the coalition in which we are taking part), the humanitarian duty to help those suffering from disease, malnutrition, and starvation should not be neglected.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">Again, our duties are clear: If you have political skill and can provide solutions, by all means you should volunteer your advice. In the meantime, we all need to do what we can to help in bridging this humanitarian response funding gap highlighted by the UNOCHA.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">And we&nbsp;</span>shouldn't forget this duty simply because other duties arise. Steadfastness of support is just as important, and possibly more important, than the initial response.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><h2><span style="background-color: white;">Syria&nbsp;</span></h2><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">Which brings us to the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. Political and military complications aside, including the difficulty with which UN and other international relief agencies can reach some of those impacted in the country, it is still true that 13.4 million people need the world's&nbsp;</span>humanitarian assistance, and the UNOCHA estimated humanitarian response funding gap at this time stands at $2.1 billion (which is 63.6%, or nearly two thirds, of what is needed to date).&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Our lack of steadfastness in helping our fellow humans is apparent in the larger gap for Syria than for Yemen -- this is the old news effect.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here also, as in the three previous cases, and despite the much more complicated politics of the situation, which may make it very difficult for most people even to formulate an opinion on who is to blame for all the suffering, the basic human duty to help our fellow human beings should be obvious.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is noteworthy in this regard that the estimated property losses from hurricanes Harvey and Irma are approximately $290 billion. This is very sad, but it is fortunately a very small percentage of our gross domestic product. The more interesting calculation in light of the previous discussion shows that just over 1% of that sum could save the lives of nearly 30 million people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h2>Concluding Remarks</h2><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We are commoners, and our efforts are unlikely to make any significant difference, but that does not eliminate our duty to do what we can to help our fellow human beings, wherever they are. Our attentions may be distracted by the news cycles, but we can budget our time, effort, and giving, so that we do not neglect any of our duties simply because new duties came up. And our varied political views, whatever they may be, do not alter those basic duties to fellow humanity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's what religion is about, and then, after we have done our work (knowing that we cannot influence the outcome), we simply follow the order that God gave his Prophet:</div><div style="text-align: right;">إن مع العسر يسرا. فإذا فرغت فانصب و إلى ربك فارغب.</div><div style="text-align: left;">[With every difficulty, there is ease. 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El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-11115694121579214402017-08-25T17:59:00.002-05:002017-08-27T07:56:33.634-05:00Hurricane Harvey<div id="AppleMailSignature" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"><div id="AppleMailSignature"><blockquote type="cite">The Heaven mourns her lovers' pain&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote type="cite">And drowns their tears in violent rain. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The tears of Heaven wash away</span>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The troubles of the lovers' day,</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As they remind them of their quest,</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And every road, and every test</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That their Beloved put them through.</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The oldest troubles and the new,</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Are tests that lead them by the hand,</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And help them all to understand</span></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The One they love and all Its ways,</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As one storm goes and one storm stays</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To wipe some tears and cause some more.</span>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Such is the Lord that we adore.</span></div></blockquote></div></div>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-270406846550292592017-08-16T13:31:00.002-05:002017-08-16T13:31:27.722-05:00On "Knowing Better"One should know better than to think that people should act better because they know better.<br />Shunning consequentialism means that one should act better regardless of whether others follow suit.<br />Nevertheless, it is difficult not to be disappointed when others continue to act consequentially and oftentimes selfishly.<br /><br />But this is not all bad:<br />Being consistently disappointed in others is the best reminder to examine one's own conduct (as the Prophet (p) said: "each human is a mirror for its sibling").<br />In particular, the disappointment itself is a reminder of at least some residual consequentialism (because it exposes one's implicit thinking that better conduct would beget better conduct).Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-70728552356789536772017-08-13T03:01:00.000-05:002017-08-13T03:05:46.372-05:00The Lonely RoadI wrote this poem almost exactly 30 years ago (when I was a graduate student, finishing my doctorate). I would not change a word today, although I will only share the first part of it here:<br /><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">لما الرفيق</div><div style="text-align: right;">ينكر صداقته للرفيق</div><div style="text-align: right;">يمشي الصديق</div><div style="text-align: right;">يقرا علامات الطريق</div><div style="text-align: right;">إلّي كتبها قبلنا</div><div style="text-align: right;">و نسي يفسرها لنا&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: right;">أهل الطريق</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">لما الغريق<br />وحده في أعماق الظلام</div><div style="text-align: right;">يقرا على حطان الكلام</div><div style="text-align: right;">أشعار رخيصة عن الطريق</div><div style="text-align: right;">يعرف و يفهم وحدته ف وسط الزحام</div><div style="text-align: right;">و يقول كلام</div><div style="text-align: right;">و لا يرضي كافر م الأنام</div><div style="text-align: right;">و لا يرضي ساير ع الطريق</div><div style="text-align: right;">ما هو كل شيخ ماشي ف طريقة</div><div style="text-align: right;">و كل شيخ ماشي ف طريق</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">...</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">(The remaining verses are redacted)</div>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-19131410878400421062017-08-07T17:41:00.000-05:002017-08-07T18:49:37.248-05:00Neo-Wahhabism, Neo-Sufism, and the Predicament of American Muslim YouthIn a series of emails last Friday, a former student took me to task, albeit quite gently, for criticizing virtually all the resources that typical American Muslim youth think they have available to them. He agreed with my criticism of the slew of newly-minted Madinah University preaches in our mosques -- who seem to have sought an easy way to earn income and reputation through a quick religious license of sorts. However, he seemed to hold in high esteem many of the older generation neo-Wahhabi and neo-Sufi preacher-teachers (of my generation), some of whom have created "universities" that are getting accredited in the U.S., etc.<br /><br />I begged this student not to force me to discuss too specifically any particular individuals or even institutions, explaining that I singled out Madinah University by name because of my alarm at the relatively recent outbreak of its alumni preachers. He pressed me further, saying that he and his generation hold in high esteem those teachers of different strains, whom I had lumped, admittedly disparagingly, into the two camps of neo-Wahhabis (mostly Saudi or Gulf trained) and neo-Sufis (mostly Yemeni and West-African trained). Without offering other alternatives, this former student (now in his late 20s, and recently married), my act in disparaging those most highly respected preacher-teachers seemed nihilistic.<br /><br />He complained that many of his friends profess non-belief in God, at least privately. I suggested that this is not a bad thing. After all, the negative theology of Islam is professed in the Shahada first by negation (<i>la ilaha</i>) before affirming (<i>illa&nbsp;Allah</i>), and the latter is only an abstract affirmation, because God is described in the Qur'an as "there is noting like unto him," which means that He is beyond human comprehension. In their 20s, those youth should be rejecting the bad depictions that they have been offered.<br /><br />I reminded him of what many philosophers have said: that most people who profess atheism are not saying that they don't believe in the abstract God of Abraham, or any of the other reasonable conceptions of the Divine, but are rather saying that they don't believe in a man with long white beard and flowing robes sitting in the sky and intervening in our every day activities the way the Greek gods were supposed to have looked and done (at least in today's cartoons). It is not at all a bad thing for his friends to have rejected this stupid depiction (which was only symbolic for the ancient Greeks, in any event, just like ancient Egyptian gods represented forces of nature through human-animal-hybrid abstractions about which they could tell stories -- which is the way humans best understand and remember things). It would be extremely intellectually lazy for them to conclude that now they know there is no God, and, indeed, when pressed further, most will not affirm that.<br /><br />What the generation of this student (which is also the generation of my children) have rejected are the teachings that their parents propagated at mosques (which were based on the failed ideologies of JI in the subcontinent and MB in the Arab world), as well as the puritanical Wahhabi teaching that was exported directly and indirectly into the U.S. This is all good. The problem is that when they looked around for alternatives, they found mostly what their parents tolerated as second-bests: the neo-Wahhabi and neo-Sufi alternatives about which I have written earlier blog posts. Indeed, those seemed like slightly Westernized variations on their JI and MB mix of puritanical Wahhabism and social-discipline-emphasizing Sufism, i.e. they are simply more marketable variations on what came before.<br /><br />The former student asked me how I would feel if someone denounced people that I admired like Muhammad Abduh (of course, perhaps unbeknownst to him, the latter was the subject of extremely vitriolic attacks during his life and after his death). I told him that Abduh was inspirational because he broke the mould and sought knowledge where he could find it (mostly in Paris, as many Egyptians in the 19th Century had), and was not looking specifically for Muslim teachers. Indeed, he broke with Jamal al-Din "Al-Afghani" when he discovered that the latter told everyone what they wanted to hear (humanism for the humanists like Abduh, but also militarism for the militant in Turkey, Iran, and India). Even then, I told him that Abduh was a creature of the late 19th and very early 20th century. He was progressive by the standards of his time, but would be extremely reactionary in our day.<br /><br />Likewise, my broader teaching, which angered people at mosques in Houston and caused me to stop giving sermons a year ago, is that it is a grave mistake to place our locus of morality in the 7th--14th centuries (earlier period for the Wahhabis and their neo reincarnations and later for the neo-Sufis). Moral examples, including the Prophet (p), were exemplary people by the standards of their time; but they were showing us a direction, not a place to stop. Examples from slavery to polygyny illustrate this point best: these were constrained but not completely eliminated, and any decent Muslim should extrapolate the trajectory and conclude that no slavery or polygamy should be allowed today. But milder examples also exist, because women were generally treated like quasi-property in many instances; for example, most classical jurisprudence considered the marriage contract essentially to be the sale of a woman's reproductive system (<i>bay`u al-bu.d`</i>)! It was an improvement on what existed in Byzantine and Sassanid periods, but you need to extrapolate... Stopping there is immoral commitment to being a medieval or pre-medieval person.<br /><br />Decisions on how to shape today's Muslims' ethics/morality, phenomenology, theology, and so on, must be informed more by Enlightenment and Postmodern advances in humanities, natural sciences and social sciences, which, in turn, should help us to understand our scripture, history, etc. In the process, the goal should not be to go back to some mythical ideal society, or to discover the ostensibly unique beauty of the Muslim tradition. In belonging to a particular community that shares a tradition and history -- as everyone must, &nbsp;by birth or adoption, whether they like it or not -- we have a language that is nonetheless shared by many other communities that predated and postdated Muslim social developments, and we can only be authentic to those who came before us by being authentic to their quest to improve on what they had found around them, more often than not modifying all traditions in the process.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-71759797471203306022017-08-04T09:55:00.001-05:002017-08-04T10:40:46.369-05:00On stark contrast and the radical choice of ethicsA few years ago, two other distinguished mentors have also criticized my code of conduct:<br /><br />The first told me that it is wrong to see the world, and our choices within it, in stark contrast (of black and white, for lack of a better metaphor), because almost all decisions reside in areas that are shades of grey. This was how she taught some of her other mentees: by offering them examples of difficult choices where there is no easy answer. I agreed, to a point.<br /><br />Another told me on multiple occasions that he has always followed the maxim not to make perfect the enemy of good enough (this is the same as the Arabic maxim ما لا يدرك كله لا يترك جله). I also agreed, to a point.<br /><br />They are both right that we are rarely offered obvious choice tests between pure good and pure evil. Those are too easy for everyone. Almost all tests are more complicated, and in this sense I agree with them that self righteously pretending like all choices have clear-cut solutions is not only foolish, but also dangerous.<br /><br />But this is not the choice (of action) of which I was speaking. I was speaking of the Kierkegaardian or Kantian radical choice (one could call it a hyper-action or hyper-choice) of leading the ethical life, not the consequentialist life.<br /><br />It is <b><i>very</i></b> tempting to be a little-bit consequentialist. But there is no such thing. If one is a little-bit consequentialist, then, by definition, one is fully consequentialist. The seemingly non-consequentialist ethical part can then be understood in terms of consequences to self esteem, anticipated afterlife, or other similar devices.<br /><br />The ethical-human curse is to face complicated tests but be asked to find simple solutions (defined by who you are), knowing that, on average, one will be wrong approximately half the time, no matter how hard one tries.<br /><br />I was having a conversation with my wife last week about a similar problem. She was blaming me for being afraid to have any excitement in life. I used the excuse of the yin-yang nature of life: With every excitement comes heartache. I am not afraid of the excitement, I said, I am afraid of the heartache.<br /><br />Lest you may think that this is a Buddhist teaching and not a Muslim one, I cited the following verses of the Qur'an:<br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: purple; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=4752&amp;idto=4752&amp;bk_no=50&amp;ID=4810#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">ما أصاب من مصيبة في الأرض ولا في أنفسكم إلا في كتاب من قبل أن نبرأها إن ذلك على الله يسير</a></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=4753&amp;idto=4753&amp;bk_no=50&amp;ID=4811#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">لكي لا تأسوا على ما فاتكم ولا تفرحوا بما آتاكم والله لا يحب كل مختال فخور</a></span><br /><br />[Nothing happens on earth or in yourselves except having been ordained and written before We bring it into reality; this is easy for God. (We tell you this) so that you will not feel sad for what you missed or happy for what you get; God loves not the arrogant and haughty. (Iron: 22-23)]Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-5694465332534233362017-08-03T09:09:00.002-05:002017-08-04T07:23:21.726-05:00On Being A Simpleton by ChoiceA few years ago, I received seemingly contradictory assessments of my code of conduct:<br /><br />One of my colleagues interjected during our conversation: "But you are an idealist." Her tone suggested that she meant it as a partial compliment. When I replied that I try hard to find the right mix of idealism and realism, she simply repeated her point, slightly differently, and with a big smile: "No, you're an idealist."<br /><br />Within days of this event, my boss commented negatively about my same code of conduct. She said something to the effect: "I must tell you that I have sensed some immaturity." I laughed and said: "Then it is too late for me." She smiled and nodded.<br /><br />They were both right. Being a simpleton by choice is neither good nor bad. It's just a choice.<br /><br />Part of this is also nature. There is no comparison, but I think that this illustration is useful: When the great Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the Fields Medal (the most prestigious mathematics prize), passed away, my brother (who is her colleague at Stanford) said that it was a terrible tragedy. That she was both brilliant and very down to earth. I told him that it couldn't have been otherwise. The same biology that made her so brilliant is the one that killed her.<br /><br />The question remains: If one's nature is such that he prefers to be a simpleton -- if this is where he finds whatever measure of peace he can -- is he being negligent, because he could have been more useful to others by being clever? All great moral teachings point in the other direction: Be a simpleton (honest, truthful, etc.) even when others aren't, and even when it will hurt you. [Of course, Plato's version of Thrasymachus would say that this type of ethics was invented by the strong to facilitate exploitation of the week.]<br /><br />The problem with this teaching is that when you are a simpleton, by choice or otherwise, others also get hurt. The problem with the opposite (Machiavellian) logic is that it rationalizes greed and outright immorality, ostensibly to make more good. It violates the Kantian principle of not taking people as means to other ends. But Kant told us little about how to handle moral dilemmas when protecting some people (as ends in themselves) requires being clever to use other people as means to that end. [In all fairness, Kant's duty ethics are non-consequentialist, so they skirt this problem completely.]<br /><br />So, it remains a simple, albeit radical, choice to be a simpleton. Maybe it's just Nature.<br /><br />Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-32418093158181264552017-07-30T09:15:00.002-05:002017-07-30T09:15:30.803-05:00Was Adam Smith An Economist? A Mediocre Economist's Identity CrisisLet me begin by saying that I am not exhibiting fake modesty by admitting to being a mediocre economist. In fact, a better title would have been "... An Inferior Economist...," if we take mediocre literally (in the middle). Were I any good at Economics, I would not be where I am, or having these thoughts; but I am extremely grateful for being where I am, which is much more than I deserve. Nonetheless, I now have an identify crisis.<br /><br />The crisis is precipitated by a monotonous stream of rejections by journal and book editors, who all tell me that whatever I submitted is not Economics. The issue is not technical rigor; some of those articles are relatively technical, and some book-oriented writings are totally non-technical. The crisis was further exacerbated when two luminaries of econometrics separately volunteered advice that I should pick up where I had left off in my work on Bayesian updating (one of them very kindly said that he still cites my 1995 <i>JASA</i> paper with David Grether, and thinks that it has not yet been surpassed although more work is needed).<br /><br />By asking whether Adam Smith was an Economist, I am not being facetious or comparing my work with his, David Hume's before him, or Ibn Khaldun long before them all. I am merely confused about the nature of the questions that I am asking (about religion, ethics, perceptions of injustice, and Economics) not being considered Economics.<br /><br />Nearly three decades ago, in Fall 1988, I was a fresh PhD and rookie assistant professor of Economics at Rochester. I went to a supercomputing conference at Cornell, and in the evening, as usual, conference participants went to a bar (I went to bars with friends, colleagues, and mentors, even though I do not drink; both because I was a useful designated driver, and because this was a virtually mandatory part of professional socialization).<br /><br />I ended up in a booth, squeezed against the wall. Next to me sat Ed Prescott, already a superstar economist, although it was still many years before he received the Bank of Sweden Prize in honor of Alfred Nobel (known somewhat pretentiously as "the Nobel Prize in Economics," <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EBEIL0G/ref=pe_2601730_221191680_em_sim_3_im" target="_blank">and one should read the history of this prize and its objective to portray Economics as a scientific field; </a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EBEIL0G/ref=pe_2601730_221191680_em_sim_3_im" target="_blank">thus giving greater political power to economists, bankers, and others</a>).<br /><br />He asked me what I did, and then what my dissertation was about. I was mortified, but told him that it was about estimation and inference in chaotic dynamical systems. I had already known that he had very low and well known opinions both about econometrics and about work on chaos theory in economics; &nbsp;so I was bracing myself for some tough words.<br /><br />Instead, he smiled kindly, and said: "It's OK! You have to prove that you are not a math wimp. And every five years or so, you have to publish another paper to prove that you are still not a math wimp. But in between, you can write some Economics. And remember this: Unless you can explain the substance to any drunk guy next to you at a bar, it's not Economics."<br /><br />He was not himself drunk, as the evening had just started. The meaning was obvious: Play the game by its rules so that you may have the intellectual privilege of working on real Economics. I already knew that. Had it not been for my abilities (limited as they may be) in mathematics and computing, I would have never been admitted to a PhD program, received a degree, had academic jobs, or received tenure.<br /><br />Had I been even a tenth as good as Prescott or the other two luminaries to whom I spoke recently (who have not won the Bank of Sweden prize... yet), I could have probably juggled the two. But I was never that good, and now in my mid 50s, with no graduate students or junior coauthors on whose energy and intellect I can rely, I cannot read as fast, retain information as long, or absorb new math and technology as proficiently. So, I have to make a choice.<br /><br />Do I write about what is important to me, and what I consider to be Economics, or do I write what would be read and can be published by Economists (or other "social scientists," I had the same problem with editors in Political Science and Sociology)?<br /><br />In a recent seminar for graduate students, wherein I presented some empirical results, I gave them the unequivocal advice: "Don't do what I do. Don't work on what you're interested in. To graduate and get a job, you need to work on what others are interested in." But it is difficult to follow this advice in my mid 50s for the sole purpose of retaining partial respect of my colleagues (which is a fool's errand, in any case), and I have the luxury of tenure but not the luxury of intelligence, work ethic, and young collaborators who can allow me to engage with what others are interested in while contributing to real Economics (as luminaries like Prescott could do and preach). That, of course, is assuming that Economics is the field in which people like Adam Smith were interested.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-82327265087294024462017-07-28T09:49:00.001-05:002017-07-28T11:35:55.748-05:00Neo-Wahhabism and Neo-Sufism: Two Facets of the Same Modern PhenomenonLet me begin by saying that my focus on Islam stems from being Muslim, and, therefore, partially responsible for my tradition and its evolution.<br /><br />I am fully aware that all the difficulties with the evolution of modernity that I spell out here are present also in other traditions -- whether within Orthodox Judaism (not recognizing fully many American Rabbis); pseudo-Christian fundamentalism (a neighbor who grew up in Houston told me that growing up in the 1950s, the phrases "mighty-Christian of you" and "mighty-White of you" were interchangeable); or secular socio-legal constitutional originalism (which brings to mind Derrida's comment that to imitate an original is to miss the point).<br /><br />It is a mistake, in my humble opinion, for Muslims to deflect responsibility by pointing to similar difficulties elsewhere. The above mentioned problems in various traditions all emerge from social evolution (for example, the racial difficulties facing traditionally White America as we make progress towards a post-racial society; two steps forward, one step back).<br /><br />Wahhabism itself was born when Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab, a Central-Arabian cleric, was shocked by the cosmopolitanism of Southern Iraq. The stark contrast can be seen to this very day within Saudi Arabia, where the coastal cities of Jeddah and Dhahran remain much more cosmopolitan, at least compared to the greater orthodoxy of Riyadh. Pure Wahhabism, like Orthodox Judaism, sought to freeze time, for fear of losing their tradition. Of course, pure Wahhabism could not defeat modernity entirely, and has evolved with time.<br /><br />My central focus in the last two postings on this blog was squarely on the phenomenon of neo-Wahhabi American preachers, who teach a softer form of orthodoxy, but orthodoxy nonetheless -- and it bears repeating that there is nothing authentic about orthodoxy. It is an attempt to freeze in time a mythical society that the orthodox invent to fight change. Thus Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab's own family of scholars were perplexed by his teachings -- they thought that they were already preserving the tradition, which required keeping up with the times!<br /><br />It is not surprising that American Muslim immigrants would seek some similar form of time-defying orthodoxy (especially after they had to admit, even if silently, that the programs of MB and JI have been disastrous failures in their countries of origin and throughout the world). All immigrants are known to try to preserve tradition, much like Italian immigrants in New York did a century ago, for fear that their children would melt within society and lose their identities (in the cases of Judaism and Islam, that includes intermarriage and conversion). They sent their kids to Madinah to learn what they thought to be authentic Islam, and find comfort in the mixture of American youth slang and orthodoxy (what I have labeled neo-Wahhabism for lack of a better term).<br /><br />Others have not been comfortable with this neo-Wahhabism, and found comfort in their children chasing alleged Sufi masters. Those have failed to see that organized Sufism (which is pseudo-Sufism) is just as dogmatic and potentially dangerous (hence my constant discomfort with the Gulen movement, for example; after all MB had also claimed since its inception to be a Sufi Tariqa and devised very similar chapter and family structures). Just as Wahhabism tried to turn human beings into Shari`a-following automata, Sufism tried to turn them into Tariqa-following automata; and the irony is that the two terms (Shari`a or road to watering hole and Tariqa or method) almost mean the same thing. Today's neo-Sufis play the same role as the neo-Wahhabis, even as the two groups claim that they couldn't be more different.<br /><br />I am aware, as my friend hinted in his emailed response to my posting yesterday, that I tend only to offer criticism, which does not seem constructive (this is the same charge that I received for my work on Islamic finance). This charge misses the point of, say, the negative theology of Maimonides or the perpetual deconstructionism of Socrates: Some problems simply do not have positive answers (or at the very least easy positive ones), and the role of the critic is to point out that easy solutions are by definition no solutions at all. I do not mean easy in implementation (neo-Wahhabis and neo-Sufis are given many tasks to keep their bodies and minds busy); it is conceptual ease that I criticize. As the Grand Sheikh Mohyiddin ibn Arabi would say, every time you think you are worshipping God, you are merely worshipping your own created mental image of God; and since this is your own creation, you are still worshipping yourself.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-43301094250301342442017-07-27T19:09:00.003-05:002017-07-27T19:09:45.107-05:00American neo-Wahhabi Preaching, Part II<span style="font-family: inherit;">Two friends have responded critically to my post this morning.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The second simply responded with the quote:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq" type="cite"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">"At the end of my life, I want to be able to say I contributed more than I criticized." Brene Brown</span></blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;I replied as follows:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A good point.<br /><br />However, the great teachers, from Socrates onwards, including most prophets recognized in our scripture, contributed mainly by criticizing.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">___</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first friend had a longer warning:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">I certainly share your concern regarding the advice being given, but see no need to avoid the substantive criticism by condemning people based on where they studied, particularly in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. &nbsp;There are plenty of thoughtful American and Canadian Muslims who have studied in Saudi Arabia, and tarring them with the label of Wahhabis because they studied in the KSA is dangerous and self-defeating. This same strategy can be used tomorrow against any one of us once the identity of the scapegoat is changed. &nbsp;Let's stick to criticizing or praising ideas, rather than names and places. &nbsp;We'll be much better off if we do so.&nbsp;</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">I responded as follows:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You are absolutely right, ... The problem is that this brand of preacher always make sure to say during their khutab that they studied at Madinah University, and that their teacher taught them this and that… This is an integral part of their own chosen and marketed brandname that lends them legitimacy.&nbsp;</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I agree that the word Wahhabi is counterproductive, but Salafi would be even more misleading, and so on. I am trying to inform them of the alienness of their own teaching to who they are, and use the term neo-wahhabi to describe them…&nbsp;</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In summary, I see your concern about using the term as a pejorative, and understand the dragnet mentality that is ever-present and also dangerous, but my main objective is for families to stop sending their kids to this recruitment school. My guess is that once USG stopped their direct sponsorship of mosques and Imams in the U.S. after 9/11, they started offering these scholarships to indoctrinate American citizens who cannot be kept out. So, I wanted to sound the alarm — not that anyone is listening.&nbsp;</span></blockquote>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-11757323492043450802017-07-27T11:24:00.001-05:002017-07-28T12:09:03.889-05:00American neo-Wahhabism: The Outbreak of "Madinah University" Preachers in Our MosquesOver the past several months, I have noticed a dangerous pattern:<br /><br />Mostly gone are the immigrant generation of JI-influenced South Asians and MB-influenced Arabs (so far, so good), but the almost exclusive category of new preachers are their American-born children (together with American-born Hispanic, African-American, or White converts) who were sent to study at "Madinah University," only to return and preach a thinly-sugar-coated neo-Wahhabism (the sugar coating is a superficial veneer of Sufism; <a href="http://elgamal.blogspot.com/2017/07/neo-wahhabism-and-neo-sufism-two-facets.html" target="_blank">see my later post here elaborating on what I mean by neo-Wahhabism and neo-Sufism</a>).<br /><br />I thought that this was only a Houston phenomenon, with which I had been familiar for a while. However, the mosque at which I have been praying most Fridays has had a number of preachers from Illinois, Michigan, and elsewhere who fit the exact same profile. This is too systematic to be a coincidence: It was clearly a methodical recruitment campaign, and it has succeeded in infecting our American-Muslim communities with neo-Wahhabism.<br /><br />I must point out that those preachers (mostly in their 20s and 30s) clearly don't understand this. Indeed, except for the few forced Arabic terms that they have clearly memorized (with improper grammar and translation that betrays the superficiality of their education), they mostly pepper their sermons with American slang and profess their American patriotism. The sugar coating of superficial Sufism seals the deal for their parents' generation and other uncritical listeners.<br /><br />Let me give one example to illustrate: Almost all of those neo-American-Wahhabi preachers are obsessed with male and female youth interacting electronically. During Ramadan, the advice was to delete all contacts of their Muslim friends of the opposite sex... "Don't even text her to remind her to pray," the preachers warned: "This is just Satan fooling you to make you commit a sin even as you think that you are pursuing virtue."<br /><br />For those who are not aware, this is not even an American adaptation of Saudi Wahhabi teaching. For the past decade or more, Saudis have been greatly distraught that their sexual segregation was circumvented by electronic means (many years ago, they tried banning Blackberry Messenger, but they couldn't stop bluetooth scanning for nearby friends, ...). So, even this seemingly very contemporary and American preaching is imported lock stock and barrel through their "Madinah University" pseudo-education.<br /><br />I have yet to hear a single hint of humanities and social sciences inspired insights from this generation of neo-Wahhabis. To belabor the specific example of sex segregation, I have to say that this cannot be more worrisome. I am not saying that a contemporary and authentic teaching to American Muslims that will meet them on their own terms will advocate sexual promiscuity, but surely these teachings have been proven sources of social disease.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/findings-from-pew-research-centers-2017-survey-of-us-muslims/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=17-07-26%20eng%20muslim%20americans&amp;org=982&amp;lvl=100&amp;ite=1543&amp;lea=314720&amp;ctr=0&amp;par=1&amp;trk=" target="_blank">Pew recently shared data that American Muslims are getting more liberal</a>, but our mosques seem to be dangerously trying to stem this healthy tide. Instead of riding and redirecting the natural tide of Muslim integration in American life, with soul-searching similar to that experienced, say, by the Conservative Jewish community a century ago, they are importing the very plague that has caused the backwardness and failure of their countries of origin.<br /><br />What a shame.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-61949255174973849872016-08-12T11:06:00.002-05:002016-08-12T11:14:59.874-05:00To Embrace Pluralism and Democracy, We Must Repudiate IslamismThis is a draft for my sermon (<i>khutba</i>) this afternoon at ISGH Main Center.<br /><br />I urge you and myself to be God-conscious and truthful:<br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=2393&amp;idto=2393&amp;bk_no=50&amp;ID=2405#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">يا أيها الذين آمنوا اتقوا الله وكونوا مع الصادقين&nbsp;</a></span></span><br />[O, community of faith, be God-conscious, and be Truthful 9:119]<br /><br />As American Muslims, there are two factors that have intensified our desire to embrace religious pluralism and democracy in American society. The first is our neighbors' increasing interest in understanding our worldview, in large part because of repeated terrorist acts by members of our extended community, and the second is the heretofore unfamiliar anti-pluralistic strain in the current political season.<br /><br />Both of those factors require acceleration of our embrace of pluralism and active conversation with the broader American society, both socially and politically. However, I submit to you, that the Islamist mindset that has characterized our institutions and sermons is antithetical to this pluralism from which we have benefited.<br /><br />The solution cannot be hypocrisy: continuing to profess the Islamist anti-pluralist orthodoxy within our communities, while trying to present a democratic facade to others outside these communities. This hypocritical two-facedness was condemned in the following Hadith.<br /><br />Bukhari and Muslim narrated, on the authority of Abu Hurayra, that the Prophet (p) said:<br /><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?flag=1&amp;bk_no=53&amp;ID=7452#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;;">تجدون الناس معادن فخيارهم في الجاهلية خيارهم في الإسلام إذا فقهوا&nbsp;</span>وتجدون من خير الناس في هذا الأمر أكرههم له قبل أن يقع فيه وتجدون من شرار الناس ذا الوجهين الذي يأتي هؤلاء بوجه وهؤلاء بوجه&nbsp;</a></span><br />[You will find that people have different intrinsic characteristics. The best among them in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance are also the best in Islam if they understand. And you will find among the best people in this religion to be the ones who hated it the most before it arrived. And you will find among the most evil people to be those who are two-faced, meeting this group with one face and that group with another]<br /><br />As I shall argue later, in line with <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Islams-Predicament-Modernity-Religious-Cultural/dp/0415484723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471013290&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=tibi+modernity" target="_blank">the views expressed by Bassam Tibi in <i>Islam's Predicament with Modernity: Religious Reform and Cultural Change</i></a>, that the word for "understanding" in this Hadith (فقهوا) is the crux of the matter. Do we understand "understanding" in the rationalist sense of my hero Ibn Rushd, reading scripture and tradition with rational thought as the arbiter, or do we understand it in the theological and juristic Islamist sense that has dominated Islamic societies (giving primacy to traditional reading of scripture over rationalism)?<br /><br />I choose the former, and read the Tradition thus: The best people are the ones who are discerning, in the rationalist sense, regardless of their religion, and the worst people are those who are two-faced, regardless of theirs.<br /><br />Let me explain further why Islamism grounded in Qur'an and Sunnah in the sense of static anchoring is inconsistent with pluralism. Tibi makes a correct distinction between diversity and pluralism. Thus, the verse that we often cite to claim that traditional Islamism is consistent with pluralism:<br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=2231&amp;idto=2233&amp;bk_no=46&amp;ID=2236#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">يأيها الناس إنا خلقناكم من ذكر وأنثى وجعلناكم شعوبا وقبائل لتعارفوا إن أكرمكم عند الله أتقاكم إن الله عليم خبير</a></span><br />[O mankind, we have made you into males and females, and made you into peoples and tribes, so that you may get to know one another, the best among you are those most God-conscious, and God is all knowing 49:13]<br /><br />To understand why this refers to diversity, while still asserting supposed supremacy of Islam, which is antithetical to pluralism, let's examine an historical episode that is often cited as a shining example of Islam's consistency with pluralism: The Prophet's (p) <a href="https://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9_%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A1_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B3/%D9%88%D9%81%D8%AF_%D8%A3%D9%87%D9%84_%D9%86%D8%AC%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86" target="_blank">dealing with Najran</a>&nbsp;(south of Hijaz, in the direction of Yemen).<br /><br />In our contemporary Muslim apologetics, we often cite the Prophet's (p) permission to the Christian delegation from Najran to pray inside his mosque, and cite the verse:<br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=258&amp;idto=258&amp;bk_no=49&amp;ID=263#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;;">قل ياأهل الكتاب تعالوا إلى كلمة سواء بيننا وبينكم ألا نعبد إلا الله ولا نشرك به شيئا&nbsp;</span>ولا يتخذ بعضنا بعضا أربابا من دون الله فإن تولوا فقولوا اشهدوا بأنا مسلمون</a></span><br />[Say, O people of the Book, let us come to common terms between us: that we worship none but Allah and do not associate any others with him, and that we do not take any among us as lords in place of Allah; then if they turn away, say we are Muslims 3:64]<br /><br />In fact, within its historical context, this was not at all pluralist. Indeed, the reference to worshipping none but Allah and not associating others with him were direct refutations of the Christian theology of divinity of Christ. To see this, recall how the story with the Christians of Najran started. The Prophet (p) sent them a warning letter:<br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; letter-spacing: 0.01600000075995922px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">«باسم إله إبراهيم وإسحاق ويعقوب، من محمد النبي رسول الله إلى أسقف نجران إن أسلمتم فإني أحمد إليكم إله إبراهيم وإسحاق ويعقوب؛ أما بعد فإني أدعوكم إلى عبادة الله من عبادة العباد وأدعوكم إلى ولاية الله من ولاية العباد، فإن أبيتم فالجزية، فإن أبيتم آذنتكم بحرب والسلام»</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; letter-spacing: 0.01600000075995922px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[In the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From the Prophet and Messenger of God, Muhammad to the Bishop of Najran. If you have submitted to God, then I thank for you Allah the God of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac. Now I say this: I am calling you to the worship of God away from the worship of his servants, and the protection of God away from the protection of people. If you refuse, then you must pay <i>jizya</i>&nbsp;(a tribute and per-capita tax). If you refuse, then I warn you that I shall declare war against you. And I close with the greeting of peace.]</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; letter-spacing: 0.01600000075995922px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #252525;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01600000075995922px;">The Christians of Najran were terrified, and after&nbsp;deliberating, they decided to send a delegation to the Prophet (p). At first, they changed into fancy clothes and went to meet him, but he would not return their greeting of peace. They consulted&nbsp;with the merchants whom they know, `Uthman ibn `Affan and Abdulrahman ibn `Awf, who, in turn, consulted with `Ali ibn Abi&nbsp;Taleb. The latter advised them to change back into their more ordinary travel clothes, which they did, and then the Prophet (p) returned their greeting of peace.</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #252525;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01600000075995922px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #252525;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01600000075995922px;">Then ensued a debate. They claimed that they had already submitted to God, and worshipped only him, implying that he should not demand that they pay tribute and otherwise should not fight them. The Prophet (p) disagreed, questioning them about their views on the divinity of Christ. They turned the question around, and asked him how he would&nbsp;characterize it given his acceptance of the virgin birth of Jesus. He replied that he&nbsp;didn't have definitive knowledge of the matter, and asked them to wait. Then he received the revelation:</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: blue; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=927&amp;idto=927&amp;bk_no=48&amp;ID=347#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">إن مثل عيسى عند الله كمثل آدم خلقه من تراب ثم قال له كن فيكون الحق من ربك فلا تكن من الممترين</a></span><br />[The example of Jesus, for Allah, is like the example of Adam, whom he had created out of dust, saying "be," and he was. Truth is revealed from your Lord, so do not doubt it 2:59-60]<br /><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?idfrom=971&amp;idto=971&amp;bk_no=50&amp;ID=977#docu" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Arabic Transparent'; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arabic transparent&quot;;">فمن حاجك فيه من بعد ما جاءك من العلم فقل تعالوا ندع أبناءنا&nbsp;</span>وأبناءكم ونساءنا ونساءكم وأنفسنا وأنفسكم ثم نبتهل فنجعل لعنة الله على الكاذبين</a></span><br />[Then, whoever debates you about him [Jesus] after the knowledge that you have received, then say let us bring our children and your children, and our women and your women, then let us supplicate to God that he may curse those who speak untruth.]<br /><br />The two groups went out into the desert in a field to make these supplications, wherein the Prophet (p) brought his beloved daughter Fatima, her two sons Hasan and Husein, and husband Ali ibn Abi Taleb. Instead of proceeding with the religious duel, as it were, the Bishop said that they do not wish to participate (Muslim commentators tell us that he did this for fear that the Prophet's (p) theology may be the correct one) and agreed to pay tribute. Thus, the Christians of Najran were the first to pay tribute to the new Islamic state. This was simultaneously a sign of submission, acceptance of the sovereignty of the Islamic state, and protection money, because they were not required to serve in the military, but would still be protected.<br /><br />This is clearly not an example of pluralism. It is toleration of diversity, on condition that Islam's superiority is unquestioned. I quoted Bassam Tibi at the beginning. He announced in 2002 that he has quit interfaith dialogues, in which he had been engaged for two decades, because other Muslim interlocutors refused to give up the Islamist mindset, continued to confuse dialogue with proselytization (<i>da`wa</i>), and to profess ultimate supremacy of Islam.<br /><br />In this regard, the accommodation of diversity in early centuries of Islam was, indeed, exemplary by the standards of its time, and throughout the medieval period. However, it falls tragically short of the post-enlightenment democratic notion of pluralism.<br /><br />The litmus test for any of our community leaders in embracing pluralism and democracy is this: Are you willing to accept that other traditions and their standards of truth &nbsp;are equal to yours (whether they call themselves Sunni, Shi`a, Christian, Baha'i, Athiest, or anything else)? If not, then no twisting of Qur'anic verses and Prophetic traditions can suffice. You are still being two-faced if you claim to embrace pluralism.<br /><br />If we are still under the illusion that we can accept the <i>Jamat-i-Islami</i>&nbsp;and Muslim Brotherhood, or any other Islamist organizations, as potential partners in the modern world, we need only read the following two quotations of their top ideologues:<br /><br />Mawdudi is quoted thus:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I tell you, my fellow Muslims, frankly: Democracy is in contradiction with your belief … Islam, in which you believe, … is utterly different from this dreadful system … There can be no reconciliation between Islam and democracy, not even in minor issues, because they contradict one another in all terms. Where this system [of democracy] exists we consider Islam to be absent. When Islam comes to power there is no place for this system.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Tibi, Bassam (2009-02-25). Islam's Predicament with Modernity: Religious Reform and Cultural Change (p. 226). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.&nbsp;</blockquote>And Qaradawi is quoted thus:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Democracy is a Greek term which means the government of the people... democratic liberalism came into the life of Muslims through the impact of colonialism. It has been the foremost dangerous result in the colonial legacy.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Tibi, Bassam (2009-02-25). Islam's Predicament with Modernity: Religious Reform and Cultural Change (p. 232). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.&nbsp;</blockquote>The alternative to Islamism is rationalist and secular: Our religion contains many excellent elements, that we wish to preserve and develop, and they inform our politics. However, we also recognize that our Canonical texts are anchored in a time of religious empires, to which they remain captive.<br /><br />Muslim societies have tried to escape the text-bound, juristic, Islamist pull, first in the example of the <i>Mu`tazila</i>, then in the philosophies of Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, and the social scientific study of Ibn Khaldun, but the rationalists lost the cultural battle.<br /><br />The victorious traditionalist approach continued to work reasonably well while society still resembled the world in which the Canonical texts are anchored, but failed miserably as the world changed drastically from that world.<br /><br />That is why our Muslim societies have failed. And this is why we are here, to escape that failure.<br /><br />We may not have overarching political, religious and philosophical solutions and leverage to bring Muslim societies to a post-enlightenment mindset that accepts pluralism. However, we ourselves belong to this post-enlightenment world. There are others within our Muslim community and in other communities who wish to take us back to darker times. We stand with those who accept modern pluralistic democracy, regardless of their religion, which means that we repudiate Islamism in all its forms.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-3981136874534797992016-03-04T12:07:00.001-06:002016-03-04T12:07:42.782-06:00Islam in America: Demographics and Politics<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a draft of my planned sermon this afternoon.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">After the classical liturgical opening. The Prophet [p] said</span><br /><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93); font-family: inherit; text-align: right;">المؤمن القوي خير وأحب إلى الله من المؤمن الضعيف وفي كلٍّ خير، احرص على ما ينفعك واستعن بالله ولا تعجز، فإن أصابك شيء فلا تقل: لو أني فعلت كذا لكان كذا، ولكن قل: قدر الله وما شاء فعل، فإن لو تفتح عمل الشيطان</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">(</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A strong person of faith is better than a weak one, and there is good in both. Pursue what is of benefit to you, seek God's support, and do not feel helpless.&nbsp;</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">And</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">&nbsp;if you&nbsp;</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">face adversity, say not "Had I done such and such, something different would have happened." Instead, say: "God has ordained this, and His will is done," because obsessing over counterfactuals starts the devil's work).</span><br /><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">This is to say that we should look forward and not obsess over the past. But it does not mean that we should not consider our past mistakes. Instead, we must study the past objectively,&nbsp;with the purpose of learning from past mistakes and doing our best&nbsp;going forward.</span><br /><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">This political season has put the issues</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">&nbsp;of religious identity politics centerstage, especially as they pertain to Islam. This is not surprising for two main reasons:</span><br /><br /><ul><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">First, nationalism and religion have often played similar roles, and were often indistinguishable, not only during the age of empires and military conquests, but also in contemporary periods. In America, specifically, religious pluralism was forced on the early colonies <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Churching-America-1776-2005-Winners-Religious/dp/0813535530/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457114803&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=stark+religion+america" target="_blank">because none of the competing religious groups could enforce their preferred religion</a> on others, and an alternative social contract was necessary. However, remnants of the early Puritans' and Congregationalists' confounding of good citizenship with membership of their particular religious group has remained strong under&nbsp;the tolerant surface.&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Second, Muslims have been particularly active in using religion politically variously as a substitute or motivation for nationalism, and this trend has been especially strong in the countries form which most of today's American Muslims have migrated.</span></li></ul><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">The numbers of American&nbsp;Muslims have grown significantly over the past few decades, mainly in the aftermath of the immigration act of 1965. In recent decades, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/07/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/" target="_blank">Pew statistics suggest</a> that nearly 10% of all new legal immigrants have been Muslim, and first generation immigrants account for approximately 65% of all Muslims in America -- the remaining 35% split equally between children of first generation immigrants and descendants of multi-generation Americans (mostly African American Muslims).</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">For the first few decades, Immigrant American Muslims were mostly politically inactive, and the imported fundamentalist view that participation in democratic elections was un-Islamic prevailed. Then, in the 1990s, a flurry of religious opinions from conservative clerics in majority-Muslim countries as well as from various religious institutions in the West changed course, <a href="http://www.meforum.org/13/how-did-muslims-vote-in-2000" target="_blank">and the view increasingly changed to one wherein voting</a> (for&nbsp;the best available or least-worst available option) was a civic duty, and, indeed, very Islamic.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">This set the stage for the&nbsp;catastrophic behavior of Muslim American organizations in the 2000 election season. CAIR and other organizations started grossly over-stating&nbsp;the number of Muslims in America (with ridiculous numbers as high as 10 or 12 million being publicized), their&nbsp;cohesion as a potential "Muslim voting block," and their degree of commitment to fundraise, organize, etc. Grover Norquist was in part architect of this move, as he promised the Republican Party a new voting block that can deliver Michigan and Florida. In the event, fundraising efforts with Muslim communities failed abysmally, and Muslims failed even to deliver significant vote numbers in Michigan.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">In the years that followed, this posturing by American Muslims, together with numerous horrific terrorist attacks perpetrated by various Muslim groups, raised suspicions about the role that Muslim Americans are playing in American society. Outreach activities by Muslim organizations only helped to make matters worse: Most immigrant Muslims thought of outreach in terms of proselytizing, and our spokespersons were the usual leaders of Muslim Student Associations who became leaders of ISNA, ICNA, ISGH, etc. Even if the vast majority of American Muslims are not Islamists, the leaders of these organizations continue to be Islamist. Just try to talk to any of them about how fortunate we are to have the opportunity to live in this country, and they will promptly change the subject to how much good Islam will bring to America (evidence of devastating failures in most&nbsp;majority-Muslim countries from which they migrated notwithstanding). We were not ready to engage America politically, and, I&nbsp;submit to you, we still are not. My goal today is to suggest some ways that we may become more ready.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">The result of our continued accommodation of Islamism in our institutions, and our premature and disastrous political adventure in 2000 was predictable: Surveys began to show increasing numbers of Americans who viewed Islam as inconsistent with American values, and a number of states strove to pass legislation banning Shari`a (later dubbed foreign) laws. The focus on outreach (in Arabic da`wa) as proselytizing prompted a leading candidate in this election cycle -- on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, no less -- to say that "They [Muslims] want to change your religion, folks. But I won't let them." The same candidate later called for a total shutdown of Muslim immigration into the U.S.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Those events must be understood in light of recent demographic projections.&nbsp;Most recent estimates by Pew suggest that the number of Muslims in America is approximately 1% of the population (i.e. just over 3 million) or just below. Islam is the largest growing religion worldwide and in America, and <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/" target="_blank">Pew projections suggested</a> that by 2050, Muslims would constitute 1.4% of the population if there is no new immigration, and 2.4% if there is continued immigration. The latter number would make Islam the second largest religion in America after Christianity. Growth would still be significant if there is no new immigration, because Muslims have the highest fertility rates, in part due to being&nbsp;among the youngest demographics in the country (fertility is approximately 2.5 children per Muslim woman in America), but Muslims constituting 10% of all new immigrants has been the main source of growth. Incidentally, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/06/a-new-estimate-of-the-u-s-muslim-population/" target="_blank">Pew suggests that </a>conversion has been a net neutral factor -- roughly 20% of&nbsp;Muslims in America converted to Islam, and roughly 20% of Muslims in America leave Islam.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Put yourself in the shoes of this candidate and his supporters. Would you not feel the same way if newcomers to your neighborhood behaved contrary to the prevailing social contract, and added insult to injury by professing superiority of their imported culture?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">This political season, I hope that our community will begin to understand its social and political failures, and begin to take positive steps for better integration in&nbsp;the American landscape. Let us begin by understanding some of the causes of our political failures:</span></div><div><ul><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Except on reactive identity-political-preservation instincts, there is really no "Muslim American vote." From 2000 through 2008, Muslims have tried to organize a voting block based on the secret evidence act and later profiling threats, and politicians are likely to play that angle in either direction, but that does not make for a natural&nbsp;constituency. American Muslims are as socioeconomically diverse as most other American groups, and their natural tendency may be socially conservative but economically liberal -- which makes them difficult to&nbsp;coalesce as a voting block.</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Different subgroups also have completely different agenda items of primary interest: social issues for the African Americans, and different foreign policy issues for different subgroups. Infamously, immigrants from India tended to be Democrat and immigrants from Pakistan tended to be Republican, and most Arab immigrants have been obsessed with the issue of Palestine (and various Arab countries more recently).</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Our organizations and discourse continue to scare America -- rightly so. First, we have the obsession with numbers and conversion, because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of outreach or da`wa, which continues to be understood as proselytizing by most immigrant Muslims and many of their offspring. Second, the community continues to harbor fundamentalist views on Shari`a, mainly due to lack of proper knowledge of Islamic history and culture -- Muslim immigrants are mostly professionals who have never received a liberal arts education, and mistake fundamentalist sacred history for history! The fact that this fundamentalist paradigm has failed miserably everywhere does not seem to deter the Islamist worldview -- on the contrary, it has fueled greater extremism in some corners.</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Our investments as a community have been&nbsp;minimal and misguided. <a href="http://www.themosqueinmorgantown.com/pdfs/ProjectMAPSAmericanMuslimPoll.pdf" target="_blank">Positive trends in a&nbsp;Zogby report notwithstanding</a>, most of our philanthropic funds have gone to real estate and other sterile forms&nbsp;that nonetheless serve as sources of identity-political pride. Our investments in our communities, both in terms of time and financial resources, have been minimal, and they have been driven by insincerity and cynical pursuit of short-term acceptance.</span></li></ul><div><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">We can begin to fit better in American society and to merit political voices if we begin to address these shortcomings. This must include:</span></div></div><div><ul><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Genuinely caring about the affairs of our immediate communities and adopted nation state. We should vote for what is beneficial to all of society, on which we're allowed to disagree with others, but we must abandon the narrow religious justifications for voting that were popularized in the 1990s. The Prophet [p] said that a neighbor is almost a family member who merits a share in&nbsp;inheritance. To be good Muslims is to care deeply about the welfare of all our neighbors.</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">Whenever we resent being subjects of double-standard treatment, we should use&nbsp;the opportunity to recognize how we ourselves are among the worst users of double standards -- including against members of our own communities with different socioeconomic backgrounds, or, in some cases, outright racism!</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(118, 101, 93);">In our interactions with law enforcement, both to protect our societies from extreme elements in our communities and to protect ourselves from overzealous law officers, we should use the opportunity to think longer-term about integration and acceptance of our status as small minorities -- they way early Puritans in the Colonies had to accept the rise of other religious groups, such as Baptists and Methodists, and the way Jews and other religious&nbsp;groups&nbsp;integrated better in American society during the mid 20th Century. Rather than seeing other minority groups as a threat, we&nbsp;should see them as our natural allies and trailblazers. We need not agree with any of those groups on all issues, and, indeed, we will learn that even those small minorities don't agree on everything. Part of understanding our place in a pluralistic society is truly to acknowledge and appreciate diversity -- not only for now, not until they know better, because we have a lot more to learn from them than they can learn from us, and we can only contribute positively when we are truly part of the American mosaic. Hopefully, this can happen soon, and the fear- or identity-politically-driven idea of a Muslim voting block will no longer be necessary.</span></li></ul></div>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-45797378526461924142016-01-19T10:07:00.001-06:002016-01-20T08:52:56.203-06:00On The Outside Looking In: The Paradox of PerspectiveAppearances to the contrary notwithstanding, we're all multicultural, and we all wish to be on the inside of whatever community we happen to be courting at any point in time. Our confirmation bias makes us seek and trust others whose multiculturalism is harmonized with ours, but keeps us watchful for the slightest divergence (an offhand remark or gesture, perhaps) to reconfirm our suspicion about said others.<br /><br />Being on the outside looking in gives you a valuable perspective for those on the inside, or so you think when you're the one on the outside. Those on the inside are quick to decide that your perspective is not useful, tautologically, because you're on the outside, and vice versa.<br /><br />I have a small replica of the Rosetta Stone above my desk at school, and used to have a mousepad shaped like one. I thought that my comparative advantage -- professionally, socially, politically, and in every other way -- was in my ability to translate cultures on the inside to those on the outside and the other way around. Now I think that this may be a futile exercise: How can you convince those who want translation that you truly understand the two languages -- ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian on the Rosetta Stone, Economics and its critiques professionally, Islamic scholarship and its critiques professionally and socially, Egyptian and American cultures, and so on?<br /><br />More difficult still, when they think that they already have a dictionary and good translations (on the inside), how can you convince them that their translators' understanding of the two languages was flawed? Can you convince yourself? Aren't you essentially arguing that you're the one on the inside of this cultural bridge, and that their other translators are the ones outside that bridge looking in?<br /><br />Rumi famously composed the verses about blind people in a room, each holding a different part of the elephant, and each insisting based on their differential experiences that the elephant is something different from what the others profess it to be. You would think that a sighted person standing at appropriate distance -- for example, Rumi -- shedding a light on the situation, and describing the full elephant and how you can reconcile the varied experiences described by others, would be offering a valuable perspective. Why should those on the inside need Rumi, though: they will say that they are the ones experiencing the elephant directly, and they can aggregate their experiences without his help -- thank you, very much.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-8289789735227693192015-10-10T11:09:00.003-05:002015-10-10T11:09:32.008-05:00On Islamists, Hindu Nationalists, and EducationToday's New York Times has&nbsp;<a href="http://nyti.ms/1LaQL5b" target="_blank">a very interesting op-ed piece</a> on India's Prime Minister Modi, and the clear lack of education that he and other leaders BJP leaders exhibit. The author, Aatish Taseer, indicts the Indian intelligentsia, to which he and his readers belong, which is associated with Congress party, and generally have received elite Western education, while the majority of the Indian population was left to Socialist-era public education systems that failed to deliver.<br />The parallels to my native Egypt are staggering. Indeed, Nader Bakkar, who may still belong to the Salafist Nour Party, for which he was a spokesman until recently, raised a question <a href="http://www.shorouknews.com/columns/view.aspx?cdate=09102015&amp;id=07a8b81f-afc5-43f6-ae34-e004e1920c48" target="_blank">in his op-ed yesterday:</a> What have the highly-educated offered beyond criticism of Islamists? At the other extreme, we find democracy advocate Mohamed Aboul-Ghar today saying that he and his party will not deal with prospective parliamentarians from the Nour Party, ostensibly because the party is religious and therefore unconstitutional (never mind that this constitution would not have been possible without the alliance of Salafis with military and civilian-democratic forces to oust the Muslim Brotherhood government).<br />This also reminded me of a vignette with the late Jamal Barzinji, who passed away last month, at IIIT in 2010. He had invited me to a two-day discussion of a proposal for IIIT to sponsor a textbook on "Islamic Economics." Naturally, I stuck with my view that you can't write a respectable textbook on something that doesn't exist, and which is almost certainly neither needed nor possible. My view was that it would make sense to write a book on "Economics for Islamists," as a way to introduce them to modern social scientific thought, which would be of value beyond economics per se. Needless to say, this was not a popular view, especially with the advocates for this proposal, but I believe that it prevailed, at least during that short visit. Late in the second day, Dr. Barzinji spoke to me privately during a coffee break, with apparent embarrassment regarding the Islamist project to which he once belonged, saying that when they were high school and college students, the dominant cultural forces in school were communist, and they sought to balance it out, but found nothing but these anachronistic Islamic references to counter. There, also, the Arab literati and elites are primarily to blame.<br />As the world's largest democracy, India provides a perfect example of the difficulties of balancing democracy, which will put majorities in power, sooner or later, with the need to have decisions made by those who are best educated. The tension becomes particularly high when the latter elites fail to deliver sufficient economic dividends to support some degrees of authoritarian or elitist bargains. They get even worse when the highly educated use their positions of power to make Wall-Street-style fortunes, as their fellow Western-educated friends in the West do, again without producing sufficient dividends for the less fortunate strata in their societies, but demand to remain in control because they know best.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-38252103245803548862015-10-06T13:19:00.003-05:002015-10-06T13:19:45.175-05:00State Religion Explanatory Power (Barro and McCleary 2005)Today, I am going to discuss in class (Econ 452: Religion, Ethics, and Economics) the Barro and McCleary (2005, Quarterly Journal of Economics) paper "Which Countries Have State Religion". The preliminary data analysis in the previous few posts is part of my illustration to the students in this class of how to come up with a term paper topic, how to look through available data to formulate a reasonable hypothesis, etc. They all write term papers for this course, and I am writing one with them, hopefully showing them by example how it's done (they also do team projects wherein they do data analysis to replicate results from earlier papers, to learn how to use R, concatenate datasets when needed, use reasonable instrumental variables, etc.).<br />For today, I figured that the presence of a state religion may provide explanatory power for the level of mistrust of people of other nationalities (which, as we have seen in previous posts, correlates strongly with the level of mistrust of people of other religions). Below are plots of the level of mistrust measured as the percentage of those surveyed who choose "do not trust very much" or "do not trust at all" when asked how much they trust people of other nationalities (this is the percentage for those who gave an answer; i.e. those who said that they didn't know or otherwise didn't give a response wee excluded).<br />The first plot is for the country having a state religion in 2000 against the level of mistrust, and the second plot is the ratio over three years (1900, 1970, and 2000) of having a state religion. The data for that are taken from the Barro and McCleary paper, Table I, which is mostly based on Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hNBRCsIJfcA/VhQQXsJdE1I/AAAAAAAAARY/HIxpa1F4imI/s1600/Untitled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hNBRCsIJfcA/VhQQXsJdE1I/AAAAAAAAARY/HIxpa1F4imI/s400/Untitled.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b4qTGHLZzIM/VhQQMt_8o6I/AAAAAAAAARQ/uWLmIGyeATM/s1600/sravg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b4qTGHLZzIM/VhQQMt_8o6I/AAAAAAAAARQ/uWLmIGyeATM/s400/sravg.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>What would be more interesting would be to correlate the state religion variables with the correlation between mistrust of people of other nationalities with mistrust of people of other religions (treating religion as a nationality). I should do that next, but am not sure whether or not I can get it done before going to class in an hour.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-43484287406925406802015-10-05T12:38:00.004-05:002015-10-05T12:50:45.629-05:00Mistrust, FDI, and Trade (No Relationship!?)Below are two plots of the level of mistrust in a country (the portion choosing either "don't trust very much" or "don't trust at all" when asked about people of other nationalities, WVS Wave 6 data) against (1) foreign direct investment as a percentage of GDP, and (2) openness (exports + imports) as a percentage of GDP (both from WB, WDI).<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kM_s1XSpoP8/VhK0svl6EUI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/kCepIaqRNLQ/s1600/mistrustfdi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kM_s1XSpoP8/VhK0svl6EUI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/kCepIaqRNLQ/s400/mistrustfdi.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Opb5nkP9R28/VhK0xgS-bOI/AAAAAAAAARA/0fnFqhIrZ4M/s1600/mistrustopen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Opb5nkP9R28/VhK0xgS-bOI/AAAAAAAAARA/0fnFqhIrZ4M/s400/mistrustopen.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The two fail to exhibit any significant relationship. (The outlier countries with moderate levels of mistrust and very high levels of FDI/GDP and (X+M)/GDP are the Netherlands and Singapore. Removing them makes the relationship even less significant).Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-34318053194051882372015-10-05T10:10:00.004-05:002015-10-05T10:10:45.676-05:00Less extreme mistrust in East AsiaI shared the previous two blog posts with an Egyptian-American friend, who was equally alarmed. Then he asked how the patterns in China, Japan, and South Korea compare.<br /><br />Here is the data for China:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vukFz8gTIzk/VhKRoTMo4GI/AAAAAAAAAQY/Du6hdh3_ams/s1600/china.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vukFz8gTIzk/VhKRoTMo4GI/AAAAAAAAAQY/Du6hdh3_ams/s400/china.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />and here is the (somewhat similar) data for Japan:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5S6flERKTG8/VhKRwpJjO2I/AAAAAAAAAQg/p8y9mm2Ne4M/s1600/japan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5S6flERKTG8/VhKRwpJjO2I/AAAAAAAAAQg/p8y9mm2Ne4M/s400/japan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Both show very strong cautious mistrust of people of other religions and other nationalities, as well as quite significant extreme mistrust of both. Concentration along the diagonal is extremely high for these countries, suggesting that they have stronger association of nationalities with religions than most other countries.<br /><br />Data for South Korea also shows quite significant cautious mistrust of people of other religions and nationalities, but almost equally significant cautious trust. This places South Korea somewhere between Japan and China, on the one hand, and U.S. and Germany, on the other.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wTYTGD0uQcA/VhKSgrLw5jI/AAAAAAAAAQo/jlcibbJYj4M/s1600/skorea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wTYTGD0uQcA/VhKSgrLw5jI/AAAAAAAAAQo/jlcibbJYj4M/s400/skorea.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-47958183426161078602015-10-01T12:54:00.002-05:002015-10-01T13:10:30.072-05:00Religion, Nationality, and Trust Redux: How Blameworthy Are Muslims?This is really alarming. The relationship between trust of people of other religions and trust of people of other nationalities, which I have mentioned in the previous blog posting is one of the strongest relationships in the latest wave of the WVS, may reconfirm my worst fears about Muslims remaining stuck in the 20th Century phenomenon of confusing religion with nationalism. In the previous posting, I showed that for the entire world, the largest category seemed cautiously untrusting both of people of other religions and nationalities, but the second largest category, and not by far, was people who were cautiously trusting of both people of other religions and people of other nationalities. I then showed that the picture was significantly better in the U.S., where a significant majority was cautiously trusting of both.<br /><br />Then it struck me: I had spoken before about the 20th Century confusion in Muslim countries, wherein the concept of a Muslim community ('umma) was interpreted in the sense of nation statehood. The abomination that is ISIS/ISIL may just be the most offensive manifestation of this heresy, but its roots are unmistakably traceable back to the middle century thought of Mawdudi and those whom he inspired, and to some extent also to the earlier effect around the turn of the previous century of Al-Afghani, who equivocated a lot on those issues, depending on his audiences. So, the hypothesis immediately jumped to my mind: Is it possible that Muslims are the most offending culprits in mistrust of other religions and nationalities. WVS data on religious identity is not very usable, because, it appears, that a person, for example, may identify herself or himself as "Sunni", and thus not be counted as "Muslim." So, I decided to look at countries with Muslim majorities, and the first few results were quite alarming.<br /><br />Here are the data for Algeria:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i7rSzjAyn9s/Vg1vvVqmgqI/AAAAAAAAAPU/L7OMnpBI9HM/s1600/algeria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i7rSzjAyn9s/Vg1vvVqmgqI/AAAAAAAAAPU/L7OMnpBI9HM/s400/algeria.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The largest category of those surveyed in Algeria (42%) fully mistrust people of other religions and other nationalities. The second largest category (24%) somewhat mistrust people of other religions and other nationalities. Together, more than two thirds of the population either do not trust at all or somewhat mistrust people of other religions and nationalities. This is very sad, indeed.<br /><br />The results for my native Egypt are not as bad:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-un36-ztzYF4/Vg1w1gzaW-I/AAAAAAAAAPk/hVqYkyUQ60c/s1600/egypt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-un36-ztzYF4/Vg1w1gzaW-I/AAAAAAAAAPk/hVqYkyUQ60c/s400/egypt.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />However, they are still not good at all. The magnitudes of the two groups along the diagonal of mistrust are not as large as in Algeria, but they are still quite large. 21.5% not at all trusting people of other religions and not at all trusting people of other nationalities is not good!<br /><br />Pakistan is somewhere in between Algeria and Egypt.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o58506WoMFs/Vg1xhQ1jXUI/AAAAAAAAAPs/_BAsr1KEddU/s1600/pakistan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o58506WoMFs/Vg1xhQ1jXUI/AAAAAAAAAPs/_BAsr1KEddU/s400/pakistan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Speaking of Pakistan, it was natural to check neighboring India, with whom she shared the colonial past and gained independence:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_74LGLkU1-0/Vg12ZNeY4JI/AAAAAAAAAQI/RQGfc9AVzJc/s1600/india.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_74LGLkU1-0/Vg12ZNeY4JI/AAAAAAAAAQI/RQGfc9AVzJc/s400/india.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">India displays the most diffuse distribution of any country that I have checked so far, and, certainly, none of the xenophobic mistrust of people of other religions and/or nationalities. I don't want to jump to the conclusion that this is a Muslim problem, but the evidence is certainly mounting in that direction.</div><br />Returning to the West, I wanted to check France, but, unfortunately, it was not available in this sample. However, West Germany was, so I used it, and the results are back to the relatively good ones seen in the case of the U.S., although not quite as good. This is the table for Germany:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cBE3IazQZJ8/Vg1yFIarhUI/AAAAAAAAAP0/IdVn2R0aFWM/s1600/wgermany.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cBE3IazQZJ8/Vg1yFIarhUI/AAAAAAAAAP0/IdVn2R0aFWM/s400/wgermany.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />And this is the table for the U.S.:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0rfVQibICaI/Vg1yr_1c25I/AAAAAAAAAP8/ziyztDUT2sk/s1600/us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0rfVQibICaI/Vg1yr_1c25I/AAAAAAAAAP8/ziyztDUT2sk/s400/us.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now, I understand that these negative attitudes in majority-Muslim countries may be the result of their colonial pasts (this is the same excuse that we use for most ills of that part of the world in the 20th century). However, that cannot be the end of the analysis. This lack of trust must be serving a function in today's world -- which may or may not be a positive one. One can compare it to the negative attitudes towards Islam and towards immigration among some Americans on the extreme political right. However, the latter, thankfully, are a small minority.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Analysis to be continued ...</div><br />Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-10144028449828457632015-09-24T14:04:00.001-05:002015-09-24T14:19:07.335-05:00A Question of Trust -- Religion and Nationality<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Everyone must know by now about presidential candidate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/09/22/ben-carson-cant-change-subject-after-contentious-muslim-remark/?_r=0" target="_blank">Dr. Carson's remarks regarding a Muslim potentially becoming President of the U.S.</a> and some depressing data from <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_IA_92215.pdf" target="_blank">recent polls about percentages of Iowa Republicans who must have a very low opinion of Islam</a>, to say the least.<br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />As it happens, I've been looking deeper at the World Values Survey, and, in particular, at relationships between questionnaire responses that are strong whether or not we control for country specific effects. One of the most resilient relationships, I have found, is that between questions V106 (degree of trust in people of other religions) and V107 (degree of trust in people of other nationalities). For the entire sample, the relationship is shown below:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bj6mC2e8LlE/VgRLXGaLuTI/AAAAAAAAAOs/5PjwC_UMxDU/s1600/trust1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bj6mC2e8LlE/VgRLXGaLuTI/AAAAAAAAAOs/5PjwC_UMxDU/s400/trust1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Where:</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">1 = Trust Completely<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">2 = Trust Somewhat<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">3 = Do not trust very much<o:p></o:p></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>13</o:Words> <o:Characters>79</o:Characters> <o:Company>Rice University</o:Company> <o:Lines>1</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> 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QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">4 = Do not trust at all<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here is the relationship graphically:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KKjNo4P2ypc/VgRLdI20HiI/AAAAAAAAAOw/jf5anJHWzZY/s1600/trust2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KKjNo4P2ypc/VgRLdI20HiI/AAAAAAAAAOw/jf5anJHWzZY/s400/trust2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Fortunately, the largest groups are those who are reservedly non-trusting (3 for both variables) followed by those who are reservedly trusting (2 for both variables), but there is a large mass (the third largest) of those who do not trust at all people of other religions or other nations.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For the U.S., the data is even better:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WVRm8_rqvEI/VgRLjvHAOyI/AAAAAAAAAO4/CBNGrEWL8ho/s1600/Amtrust1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WVRm8_rqvEI/VgRLjvHAOyI/AAAAAAAAAO4/CBNGrEWL8ho/s400/Amtrust1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A clear majority, 56% of the respondents were cautiously trusting (2 for both variables), with an additional 5% fully trusting (1 for both variables). Yes, 16% are moderately mistrusting, and 4% are fully mistrusting, but these percentages are still much lower than for the world as a whole. Here it is graphically:</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=13189529" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qDzKHUJc-YA/VgRLqtQY2oI/AAAAAAAAAPA/gwg62lblfGU/s1600/Amtrust2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qDzKHUJc-YA/VgRLqtQY2oI/AAAAAAAAAPA/gwg62lblfGU/s400/Amtrust2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The relationship between approaches to religion and nationality are undeniable, here in the U.S. or in the world as a whole. Recent bad news notwithstanding, America still seems more (cautiously) trusting than most!</div>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-91201605716790774672015-09-18T10:56:00.002-05:002015-09-18T11:28:15.898-05:00Walking into the desert<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the draft of my khutba (Friday sermon) for this afternoon:</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Roughly 2 million pilgrims are converging on Makkah. On Tuesday, they will move to the tent city in Mina, and then on Wednesday, they will go to the mount of Arafat to perform the central rite of Hajj.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For those of us who have not performed the Hajj, may we get a chance to be there. For those of us who have already fulfilled the requirement, please join me in thinking of another group.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pilgrims pay substantial amounts, around $10,000 for each of the 10,000 or so Americans going to Hajj, and in many parts of the world, their entire life’s savings, to leave their homes and dwell in tent cities in the Arabian desert for five days.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile, many more millions have been forcibly displaced from their homes, often after suffering life-altering losses in life and property, and with little or no hope of ever returning to their homes.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to the UNHCR (the UN refugees agency), the number of displaced persons at the end of 2014 was 59.5 million people — and by now, the number must have exceeded 60 million. This is an all time high, nearly double what it was a decade ago.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This rise in the number of refugees is mainly due to conflicts in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and more than half the refugees are children.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Most recently, Syria — historically one of the wealthiest and most educated regions on earth, the cradle of civilization, the seat of the mighty Umayyad dynasty — has become the largest producer of refugees — nearly 8 million internally displaced and nearly 4 million refugees seeking refuge in other countries. The second largest number of refugees come from Afghanistan, nearly 2.6 million, and Somalia at 1.1 million. Adding Iraq, Pakistan, Myanmar and other countries, it is clear that disproportionately most of the refugees and internally displaced persons are Muslims.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A Friday sermon is not the right place to focus on denouncing the war-mongers and the Muslim and non-Muslim states that feed the war machines that have resulted in massive carnage and displacement of Muslim and non-Muslim populations. Denounce we must, because the refugee problem in Europe, which grabs most headlines today, is only the tip of the iceberg, consisting of the relatively few tens of thousands who have managed to brave treacherous waters or mountains to make it to European borders. Many more millions stay behind, internally displaced or seeking refuge in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, etc. So, denounce we must, but we must also look at what we as individual Muslims can and should do.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Therefore, I want to return to the stark similarities and stark differences between the two experiences of groups, on the one hand, paying thousands of dollars to walk out into the desert and stay in tent cities, and those, on the other hand, who had to risk their lives by moving out of their homes, in order to avoid near certainty of death if they stay.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to focus on the individual Muslim and his choices. As I scanned opinions of scholars and laypeople last night on the issue of performing multiple pilgrimages, I noticed a rift between those (including numerous highly respected religious scholars) who had condemned it — because it increases crowds, and raises costs, thus preventing others from performing the obligation and increasing the risk of disease for those who go — and those who deflected the question by saying that acts of religious obedience should never be condemned, and that one should first look at those who waste their money on frivolous tourism and other spending, those who haven’t paid the right amount of zakah, etc.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I will not even comment on the $20 billion being spent in the construction sector to attract more pilgrims, or the many more billions spent on buying weapons and supporting waring groups, sometimes on both sides of conflicts. And, of course, I am not commenting on those who are performing their first obligatory Hajj.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to use the contrast between the two groups walking out into the desert — one knowing that tents are waiting for them, and that there is a very good chance that they will make it back to their homes, and the other group, just hoping for food, water and shelter to last one more day — and to think of a Muslim who has to decide whether to pay $10,000 to go to Hajj one more time or to give a fraction of that money to support the refugees.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Please understand that I do not mean to condemn any particular personal choices. I mean to study the mindset of Muslims that may be behind our current state of affairs.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a social scientist, I turned to data. In the most recent World Values Survey, collected in 2013 and 2014, two questions were asked about the meaning of religion:</span></div><ul><li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first question (V150) went as follows:&nbsp;</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: inherit;">With which one of the following statements do you agree most? The basic meaning of religion is:</span></li></ul><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 To follow religious norms and ceremonies&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2 To do good to other people&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While 71% of non-Muslims stated that the basic meaning of religion was to do good to other people, barely 51% of Muslims stated the same. The sample sizes were big enough (63,500 non-Muslims and 17,500 Muslims) for this result to be shocking.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is in direct violation of the Hadith narrated by Tabarani:</span><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;حَدَّثَنَا&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=11812" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة">إِبْرَاهِيمُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ عَلِيٍّ&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>، ثَنَا&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=17651" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة">السَّرِيُّ بْنُ مِهْرَانَ&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>، ثَنَا&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=20868" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة">أَبُو مُعَاوِيَةَ عَبْدُ الرَّحْمَنِ بْنُ قَيْسٍ&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>، ثَنَا&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=18268" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة">سُكَيْنُ بْنُ أَبِي سِرَاجٍ&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>، ثَنَا&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=6123" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة">عَمْرُو بْنُ دِينَارٍ&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>، عَنِ&nbsp;<a href="http://library.islamweb.net/hadith/RawyDetails.php?RawyID=4967" rel="gb_page_center[626, 267]" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="معلومات الرواة">ابْنِ عُمَرَ&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>، أَنَّ رَجُلا جَاءَ إِلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ ، فَقَالَ : يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ، أَيُّ النَّاسِ أَحَبُّ إِلَى اللَّهِ ؟ وَأَيُّ الأَعْمَالِ أَحَبُّ إِلَى اللَّهِ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ ؟ فَقَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ :&nbsp;" أَحَبُّ النَّاسِ إِلَى اللَّهِ أَنْفَعُهُمْ لِلنَّاسِ ، وَأَحَبُّ الأَعْمَالِ إِلَى اللَّهِ سُرُورٌ تُدْخِلُهُ عَلَى مُسْلِمٍ ، أَوْ تَكْشِفُ عَنْهُ كُرْبَةً ، أَوْ تَطْرُدُ عَنْهُ جُوعًا ، أَوْ تَقْضِي عَنْهُ دَيْنًا ، وَلأَنْ أَمْشِيَ مَعَ أَخٍ لِي فِي حَاجَةٍ ، أَحَبُّ إِلَيَّ مِنْ أَنْ أَعْتَكِفَ فِي هَذَا الْمَسْجِدِ يَعْنِي مَسْجِدَ الْمَدِينَةِ شَهْرًا ، وَمَنْ كَفَّ غَضَبَهُ سَتَرَ اللَّهُ عَوْرَتَهُ ، وَمَنْ كَتَمَ غَيْظَهُ ، وَلَوْ شَاءَ أَنْ يُمْضِيَهُ أَمْضَاهُ ، مَلأَ اللَّهُ قَلْبَهُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ رِضًا ، وَمَنْ مَشَى مَعَ أَخِيهِ فِي حَاجَةٍ حَتَّى يُثْبِتَهَا ، أَثْبَتَ اللَّهُ قَدَمَيْهِ يَوْمَ تَزُولُ الأَقْدَامُ "&nbsp;.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[On the&nbsp;</span>authority<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;of Ibn Umar, a man came to the Prophet (pbuh) and asked&nbsp;</span>him, what people are most beloved to Allah, and what acts are most beloved to Him. The Prophet (pbuh) replied: "The most beloved people to Allah are the ones who are most&nbsp;beneficial to other people. And the best&nbsp;actions in the eye of Allah is happiness that you bring to a fellow Muslim, a problem that you solve for him, hunger that you feed, or debts that you repay. Indeed, to walk with my&nbsp;brother in his time of need is better for me than spending a month in seclusion in this (Madinah) mosque. Whoever can curb his anger, Allah will hide his faults, and one who curbs this anger when he can act on it will be rewarded on the day of judgement with a heart full of contentment..."]</span></div></div><ul><li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The second question (V151) went as follows:&nbsp;</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: inherit;">And with which of the following statements do you agree most? The basic meaning of religion is:</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;</span></li></ul><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 To make sense of life after death<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2 To make sense of life in this world&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For this question, 67% of non-Muslims opined that the basic meaning of religion is to make sense of life in this world, but, again, only 51% of Muslims agreed.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Combined, nearly one third of Muslims, 31%, chose the first option in both questions (religion to them was basically about norms and ceremonies, and is about life after death), whereas the fraction was less than half, at 14.6% for non-Muslims.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;This is quite alarming. Lest we forget —</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the Qur’an, those who focus on ritual and make business of religion have been strongly chastised:</span></div><div dir="rtl" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">أَجَعَلْتُمْ سِقَايَةَ الْحَاجِّ وَعِمَارَةَ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ كَمَنْ آمَنَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ وَجَاهَدَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ لَا يَسْتَوُونَ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ وَاللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ<b>&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[Do you consider providing water to pilgrims and keeping&nbsp;</span>the<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;Holy Mosque occupied the equivalent of having faith in Allah and the final day and struggling in His way? These are not equivalent in His eyes, and He does not guide transgressors.]</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Muslim has narrated</span></div><div dir="rtl" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">4<b>661</b> 2569 حَدَّثَنِي <a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/showalam.php?ids=14529">مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ حَاتِمِ بْنِ مَيْمُونٍ </a>حَدَّثَنَا <a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/showalam.php?ids=15578">بَهْزٌ </a>حَدَّثَنَا <a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/showalam.php?ids=15744">حَمَّادُ بْنُ سَلَمَةَ </a>عَنْ ثَابِتٍ عَنْ <a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/showalam.php?ids=12003">أَبِي رَافِعٍ </a>عَنْ <a href="http://library.islamweb.net/newlibrary/showalam.php?ids=3">أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ </a>قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ يَقُولُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ يَا ابْنَ آدَمَ مَرِضْتُ فَلَمْ تَعُدْنِي قَالَ يَا رَبِّ كَيْفَ أَعُودُكَ وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْعَالَمِينَ قَالَ أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّ عَبْدِي فُلَانًا مَرِضَ فَلَمْ تَعُدْهُ أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّكَ لَوْ عُدْتَهُ لَوَجَدْتَنِي عِنْدَهُ يَا ابْنَ آدَمَ اسْتَطْعَمْتُكَ فَلَمْ تُطْعِمْنِي قَالَ يَا رَبِّ وَكَيْفَ أُطْعِمُكَ وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْعَالَمِينَ قَالَ أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّهُ اسْتَطْعَمَكَ عَبْدِي فُلَانٌ فَلَمْ تُطْعِمْهُ أَمَا عَلِمْتَ أَنَّكَ لَوْ أَطْعَمْتَهُ لَوَجَدْتَ ذَلِكَ عِنْدِي يَا ابْنَ آدَمَ اسْتَسْقَيْتُكَ فَلَمْ تَسْقِنِي قَالَ يَا رَبِّ كَيْفَ أَسْقِيكَ وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْعَالَمِينَ قَالَ اسْتَسْقَاكَ عَبْدِي فُلَانٌ فَلَمْ تَسْقِهِ أَمَا إِنَّكَ لَوْ سَقَيْتَهُ وَجَدْتَ ذَلِكَ عِنْدِي</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[On the authority of Abu Hurayra, the Prophet (</span>pbuh) said that on the day of judgement, Allah will say "O, Son of Adam, I was sick and you didn't visit me." Man will answer: "Lord, how can I pay you a visit in sickness when you are the Lord of all worlds," and the Lord will reply: "Did you not know that my servant so and so was sick, and you didn't visit him; did you not know that had you visited him, you would have found me there?" "O, Son of Adam, I was hungry and you didn't feed me." Man will way: "Lord how can I feed you when you are the Lord of all the worlds," and the Lord will reply: "did you not know that my servant so and so was hungry, and you didn't feed him; did you not know that had you fed him, you would have found the same with me?" "O, Son of Adam, I was thirsty, and you didn't give me water." Man will say, "O, Lord, how can I give you water, when you are the Lord of all the worlds," and the Lord will reply: "Did you not know that my servant so and so was thirsty and you didn't provide him with water; did you not know that had you provided him with water, you would have found the same with me?"]<br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, I leave you with these questions:</span></div><ul><li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Have too many of us confused tools (acts of worship) and incentives (afterlife rewards or punishments) for ends in themselves?</span></li><li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the process, have we become so selfish that even when we want to spend in the religious path, we end up spending on ourselves?</span></li></ul>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-41829942667110837682015-07-16T10:41:00.000-05:002015-07-16T10:41:06.155-05:00Profit sharing takes center stage in American politicsToday's <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c4645512-2ae0-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3fzypbHFL" target="_blank"><i>Financial Times</i>&nbsp;highlights</a> leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's advocacy for profit sharing schemes that would contribute to tapering wealth and income inequality.<br /><br />The <i>FT</i>&nbsp;article cites <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2015/01/15/104266/report-of-the-commission-on-inclusive-prosperity/" target="_blank">work done by the Center for American Progress</a>, led by Larry Summers and Ed Balls. CAP is, of course, very close to the Clintons. Its founder, John Podesta, is the Chairman of Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign, and was formerly President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff.<br /><br />Of course, profit sharing has been for long a favorite subject of those writing about "Islamic economics," although the practice of "Islamic finance" has been mainly focused on debt finance, which is not forbidden. Rather than brag about the West discovering the virtues of profit sharing, and labeling the latter "Islamic," one should note that the profit sharing forms discussed in Islamic books of jurisprudence (mainly <i>mudaraba</i>, or silent partnership, and <i>musharaka</i>, or full partnership) predated Islam and were simply adopted within.<br /><br />In other words, the choice is really not between financial methods that depend for their legitimacy on holy writ and revelation, on the one hand, and some man-made alternatives. All of these financial models are man-made through a trial and error process. We learn from history the effects of various mixes of finance, especially on combinations of economic growth and equity of distribution, and societies may then make their choices. Obviously the American left is getting more interested in issues of income and wealth distribution, and hence refocusing on financial and corporate models that are conducive to less inequitable distribution (although this is <a href="http://elgamal.blogspot.com/2014/01/exploitative-profit-sharing-on.html" target="_blank">no panacea, as I have argued in an earlier posting</a>), including, potentially, hybrid mutual models wherein the workers have partial ownership of enterprises (which, I have argued <a href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~elgamal/files/Mutuality.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~elgamal/files/Mutuality-14.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, is closer to the spirit of classical Islamic jurisprudence than the more recent financial-engineering driven "Islamic finance" that aims to circumvent the spirit of the Law while following its letter, not too well).<br /><br />Abandoning the brandname "Islamic" and focusing on the prudential regulatory substance of profit sharing rules is best exemplified in the best selling book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/House-Debt-Recession-Prevent-Happening/dp/022627165X" target="_blank">House of Debt:&nbsp;</a></i><i style="line-height: 1.3;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/House-Debt-Recession-Prevent-Happening/dp/022627165X" target="_blank">How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again</a></i><span style="line-height: 1.3;">, by two very successful mainstream Finance professors, Atif Mian (at&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20px;">Princeton</span><span style="line-height: 1.3;">) and Amir Sufi (at University of Chicago GSB). We know&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/3ec604c0-ec96-11e3-8963-00144feabdc0.html" target="_blank">from</a></span><a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/3ec604c0-ec96-11e3-8963-00144feabdc0.html" style="line-height: 1.3;" target="_blank">&nbsp;this review that Larry Summers thought quite highly</a><span style="line-height: 1.3;"> of Mian and Sufi's argument, which was focused on the housing crisis, in&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20px;">particular</span><span style="line-height: 1.3;">, but the principles&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20px;">have</span><span style="line-height: 1.3;">&nbsp;been well known for a long time.</span><br /><span style="line-height: 1.3;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 1.3;">Let this be a lesson for young scholars who are interested in "Islamic finance." Don't. Focus on being very good at Finance, writ large, like Mian and Sufi did. Then, if you are even half as good as they are, your arguments, which are not hidden behind references&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20px;">to</span><span style="line-height: 1.3;">&nbsp;metaphysics and&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20px;">exclusionary</span><span style="line-height: 1.3;">&nbsp;scholarship, may convince leaders to make the world a better place.</span>Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13189529.post-58511188208587024372015-06-05T01:47:00.002-05:002015-06-05T01:47:38.309-05:00Class and conductI decided finally to get out of Cairo before I left for good at the end of the month. The closest beach was at Ain El-Sokhna, so I came to spend the weekend here. As I was walking, minutes ago, by some villas overlooking the sea, I came face to face with A young gardener working on the gardens of these mostly unoccupied villas. I smiled and said good morning, but he kept his stern face and fierce gaze and didn't reply. There's no way he didn't see or hear me as we were close and looking eye to eye.<br /><br />Staff in the hotel always smile back and return the greeting. For them, it is obviously a repeated game (both individually, for tips, and collectively, for repeat business). I wonder if the gardener had been working at an area where most homes are occupied. Would he have been conditioned to smile back and return the greeting? Does he do that with the owners of these resort villas when they're in town?<br /><br />More importantly, are those workers who smile and return the greeting secretly resentful, and would they like to keep a stern face and fierce gaze like the gardener I've just met? When one gives a significant tip, are they genuinely happy and appreciative, or are they secretly resentful that a sum of money that one considers substantial may be insignificant to another (a tip)?<br /><br />Does the same extend to those whom we help? Especially, conversely, if you help someone of a higher class unselfishly, do they resent it? About 25 years ago, my friend RS introduced me to two great economists, RR and MM. The latter two were working on a paper and wanted someone to help them solve their model numerically. I gladly helped them out, and it only took a few hours. A few months later, MM was giving a seminar at Caltech and showed me a draft paper with the authors listed as MM, RR and El-Gamal. I didn't tell him that I always follow alphabetical order, but told him what is more important: I didn't contribute a whole lot to the paper, so a "thank you" in the footnote would suffice. RR later sent me a contract to be paid as a consultant for the work that I had done on the paper. I was deeply offended at the time. I guess that I was offended that he was offended (a lowly person like me should have been delighted to get a coauthorship with him, and should have accepted it gratefully). He was obviously a great man, and I should have accepted it, just like this gardener should have smiled back and reciprocated the greeting.Mahmoud El-Gamalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15714069493254663627noreply@blogger.com0